U.S. planning to have strict rules for sick passengers

U.S. planning to have strict rules for sick passengers

In an effort to safeguard the country against the lethal bird flu virus and other communicable diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have put forward a proposal for regulatory alterations aimed at the airline and shipping companies.

According to the proposed rules, airlines and ship operators will have to maintain electronic records of passengers for a minimum of 60 days and hand them over to the public health authorities within a day if requested for.

Further, crew members would require to report to the public health authorities in case symptoms like high fever, headache, neck stiffness, jaundice etc are observed in any of the passengers.

Nine diseases have been short listed that would prevent a person from entering the country. They are pandemic influenza, cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers and SARS.

CDC, which handles the crucial task of for supervising and countering health hazards, further emphasized that they be granted authority to vaccinate and treat quarantined people and also have in place a proper a set of distinct legal rights for the ones quarantined.

The authority did make it clear though that the quarantine rules would be enforced only in cases where a person is likely to put the public health at risk or if anyone declined to cooperate when asked politely asked to stay in isolation.

Dr. Martin Centron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine, also asserted that they are not going to quarantine people just for the sake of it like isolating someone for carrying a simple cough or cold.

The pressing need for change in regulations can be put down to growing fear of a bird flu pandemic ever since its devastating effect in different parts of Asia where 67 people have so far succumbed to the fatal virus since late 2003.

While no cases of bird flu have been detected as yet in the United States, the CDC does not want to take any chances and hence have recommended some drastic chances in the rules which have not been amended in a major way over the last 25 years.

Even when SARS created pandemonium back in 2003, the U.S. health officials tried to avert the entry of sick travelers into the country. However, they found it extremely difficult to trace passengers as the airline officials kept their records for a very short period of time and that too were insufficient as they included nothing more than seat numbers.