Heritage

Airlines are well prepared to deal with sick passengers during flight

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An air crew in Rio de Janeiro during a past emergency rescue mission. Airline crew have first aid skills and training to handle sick passengers. AFP PHOTO

Last week, we covered how West Africa was engulfed in an Ebola outbreak. Despite reassurances from health authorities everywhere, Kenyans were convinced that it was only a matter of time before a case of the epidemic was detected in Kenya.

The primary means of containing Ebola is by preventing sick patients from boarding an aircraft. Obviously ill passengers are of course excluded from flying. The rest have their temperature taken since almost everyone with any infectious process will develop a fever as the body fights the pathogen.

The problem is that third world countries are just not very good at enforcing such measures even under such critical circumstances. From experience with our own country, which incidentally is more advanced than the ones battling the disease, we know corruption, incompetence or just plain laziness will eventually let someone with Ebola through.

Just in case anyone thought the lethality of the disease would inspire more professionalism, a passenger from Liberia posted on the Internet how she went looking for the screening centres at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and couldn’t find them. She was directed to join the normal immigration queue by an official who was not bothered.

But even in advanced countries where everything works, the incubation period of diseases mean that someone with a contagious disease could possibly develop symptoms while on a plane.

Should this happen, pilots would have to relay to air traffic control information such as the number of suspected cases and the nature of the public health risk.

Pilots may also coordinate with doctors on ground to find out information on how to handle the patient and ultimately make the final decision on whether to divert. I’m sure the cockpit door would then be closed and the recirculation fans switched off.

The front line staff who will have deal with a sick passenger are the cabin crew. Small wonder then that they are advised to ensure that they get as many vaccinations as they can and to keep them up to date.

In general crew should handle any body fluid with great care. They must use gloves while dealing with a sick passenger as well as wash their hands frequently. They should also avoid contact with their eyes, nose or mouth.

The sick passenger should be provided with a face mask to minimise spread of infectious droplets. They should also be isolated from other passengers if possible by at least six feet. The number of people who deal with the sick passenger should be kept to a minimum and interactions between them kept as brief as possible.

If they require frequent access to the lavatory and one should be reserved for them. At the end of the flight, all the infectious material should be properly sealed in a plastic bag and the company notified.

After all these heroic measures the flight crew and passengers would probably face very long quarantine periods.

Dr Ondieki is a pilot with an international airline.