Africa Migrants Trigger Ebola Panic in Albania

Albania is recovering from false Ebola alarm after police detained 38 Eritrean immigrants in a mountainous area and arrested two suspected traffickers on Tuesday.

Fears of an outbreak of the deadly virus spread after medics in Vlora, 145km south of the capital, Tirana, told local media that samples from the African migrants had been sent for testing at the Public Health Institute, ISHP, in Tirana.

Silva Bino, from the Public Health Institute, dismissed the scare, however. “There is nothing there,” she said. Eltar Deda, from the Ministry of Health, told BIRN that immigrants received medical help but no treatment related to Ebola was necessary.

Albania is often used as transit point for African migrants trying to reach Western Europe from Greece. They pay local people to smuggle them across the border from Greece and further north toward Montenegro. Albanian police usually detain them for a few days and then let them go.

Eritrea is one of the poorest countries in the world and is under control of an oppressive regime. However it is thousands of miles from West African countries, which is the centre of the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.

Albania’s Health Inspectorate urged Albanians on 6 August not to travel to Africa and said that it has stepped up border controls.

Currently, the Ebola virus is present in four countries in West Africa - Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. 

 

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