THERE’S no need to get hysterical about Ebola, one of the world’s top medical officers says.
WORLD Medical Association chairman Dr Mukesh Haikerwal says Australians should take sensible precautions before returning home after treating Ebola patients.
However, he says it would be very difficult for people in Australia to catch the disease. “If you’re within an Ebola area you certainly need to be responsible in the way in which you move and transport out, and there may well need to be some time between when you’re leaving a country where you’ve been treating people (to return to Australia),” he said on Thursday. “(But) I think a lot of what we’re seeing is hysteria. “More people are dying from measles or flu or many of the other diseases. “It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take it seriously and we shouldn’t be sensible but we don’t need to get hysterical about it.” Dr Haikerwal, in Melbourne for an international health summit, said Australia’s quarantine and disease detection systems were very robust.