Int'l passengers screened for Ebola at City airport

Nguyen Van Sau, head of the Centre for International Health Quarantine, said that passengers from West African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak were being asked to fill out health declaration forms.

The Health Department's deputy head, Nguyen Huu Hung, said that the number of passengers from countries affected by the Ebola outbreak were not high.

Vietnam had yet to see anyone who had the Ebola virus, he said.

Hung asked the centre to quarantine passengers suspected of carrying the virus, and to transport them to the city Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

The hospital would take blood samples and send it to the city's Pasteur Institute for testing, he said.

He said the centre would send information each day to the Preventive Medicine Centre in order to carry out surveillance.

The department's Health Education and Communication Centre would also provide brochures on Ebola's symptoms and prevention to the Centre for International Health Quarantine, who would in turn hand out materials to passengers.

Hung told hospitals to prepare medicine and other medical materials in case of an outbreak.

"The public needs to know more about the symptoms and the locations of all hospitals in the city," Hung said.