Australian man in Thailand under Ebola quarantine at home

Customs officials use a thermometer to screen passengers at the arrival hall of Murtala Mohammed International airport in Lagos, Nigeria.

AN Australian man who recorded an elevated temperature has been told to stay at his home in Thailand after returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 49 people have died of Ebola.

The unnamed 47-year-old returned to Thailand on October 17 from the DRC, where he works in the oil-drilling industry. He lives in Trat province, 312km southeast of Bangkok.


Reports said Trat Hospital had been asked by the Thai public health office to prepare “to put a patient under investigation”, after he recorded an elevated temperature when he was tested at Bangkok international airport.

A doctor at Trat Hospital’s emergency unit said the man had been told to “remain at home” under observation, until November 5, three weeks after returning from Africa.

“He doesn’t come to the hospital, he just stays at home,” the doctor said.

The order is in line with the mandatory 21-day quarantine for medics returning to the US who may have had contact with Ebola patients in west Africa.

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC, reported by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, is unrelated to the outbreak in west Africa, where nearly 10,000 people have been infected and almost 5000 have died from the virus.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the CDC has reported 67 cases of Ebola and 49 deaths.

The concerns over the Australian comes as Thai medical authorities are set to reveal the results of blood tests on a British man, 68, who was found dead in his apartment in Phuket on October 23.

The man, who had travelled from Lagos in Nigeria on October 7, went to a local hospital on October 15 after fainting. Doctors treated him for a heart condition and sent him home.

The Thai Health Department is monitoring about 25 people who had been in contact with the man.

Research scientists at Thailand’s Mahidol University announced recently they were successful in developing an antibody treatment for Ebola using human gene therapy.

The Thai researchers are receiving assistance from the World Health Organisation and the US National Institute of Health to continue their research.

Thailand is closely monitoring visitors from Ebola-affected states, with more than 2400 people screened without detecting any cases.


AAP