Health cites S.I.D.S. outbreak concern

An outbreak of disease is the biggest concern harboured by the Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) as it gears up for the Small Island Developing States (S.I.D.S.) Conference.

Talking exclusively to the Samoa Observer the Director General of Health, Leausa Dr Take Naseri, said that as many people were travelling to Samoa to take part in the event his department was preparing for all contingencies that may arise.

“But the challenge now is the potential of an outbreak during S.I.D.S. and a lot of people are coming,” he said.

“This virus spread by mosquitoes, the Chikungunya, can cause problems because there is a high morbidity (illness) rate.”

Looking to the local population, Leausa said Samoans’ physiology was quite naïve when it came to the virus, an outbreak of which is still yet to be confirmed, because the country had never experienced this virus before.

“The Samoan population has not been exposed to any Chickungunya before,” he said.

“It is a new virus and we don't know how our systems are going to react to combat the virus."

“With the high rate of diabetes, hypertension, and all these non-communicable diseases you never know how the body will react and it may carry a high fatality rate."

“So that is the scary part.”

He said while reports from American Samoa were reading that many people were getting sick but were not dying, over here it may be slightly different.

“But we hope the disease will be like what we read on the studies done on it – people get sick but they don't die of it,” he said.

“That is the challenge."

“Our population is quite naïve they haven’t been exposed to this virus, naïve in the sense that (people here) haven’t been exposed to it."

“We are a small population and a lot of people will be involved in the S.I.D.S.”

Leausa said both the M.O.H. and National Health Service had taken steps to put preventative measures in place, like spraying for mosquitoes.

“We are educating the public and doing population based studies and (are looking at) intervention and preventative measure’s,” he said.

“We have done a lot of planning for that.”

The Director General said on a more macro level his Ministry was responsible for the health security of the conference.

“We have given out travel advice to all the people coming, it is now on the S.I.D.S. website,” he said.

“In addition to giving travel advice we will also be looking at the information on the immigration arrival information form where we can pick up some diseases.”

“We have lifted our boarder control level and have been spraying the international airports and international wharfs.”

“We are already spraying the airplanes on arrival especially the planes from American Samoa.”

“We have appointed a doctor to take questions - Tagaloa Dr Robert Thomsen will be the contact person.”

“And we are trying to educate the public of the different people and you never know what they can bring in terms of disease.”

Leausa said another preventative measure his Ministry is taking is to educate food handlers in the proper manner to handle food.

“We are doing a lot of training with the food handlers so that the food is safe for consumption by everyone,” he said.

“Currently there is a training downstairs (at the M.O.H.) for food handlers today and tomorrow (last week), and then closer to the conference we will up date them again on this.”

“We are sending people to monitor the public facilities as we have trained people on the hygienic way to be clean.”

“We have upped our monitoring during the conference, we are going to monitor the food courts we and the venues to ensure proper sanitation and hygiene levels.”

“We are also looking at where they are going to post their waste especially with the cruise ship down in town.”

“And we have a clinic set up for anyone who is sick.”

He said in addition to this his security team have plans for both a mass casualty event and a plan for a disease outbreak.

“We have plans if there is a potential mass casualty event and a plan for an outbreak of disease,” he said.

“They are both now with our security sub committee.”

Leausa said furthermore the M.O.H. is, in partnership with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (S.P.C.) and the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.), working on mass gathering disease surveillance.

According to America’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) implementing such surveillance might help detect outbreaks or possible acts of biologic terrorism and enable prompt public health intervention.

“We have planned this with the W.H.O. and S.P.C.,” he said.

“We started when we learned of the outbreak of the Chikungunya and the was at the potential threat of an outbreak of Chikungunya over here.”

“So now we have S.P.C. and W.H.O. down here working with us not just for Chikungunya but for any disease that can pop up from the common flu to S.T.I.’s”

The Director General said in all their preparations the United Nations (U.N.) has not flagged any problems with his Ministry’s preparations for the event.”

“They (the U.N.) wanted to know what is our mass casualty plan, what are we doing,” said Leausa. “We have that in place they have agreed with most of what we are doing, at the boarder control point of entry.”

“I think we have complied with a lot of what they have requested.”