Ebola screening at Serbian airports "not rigorous"

Ebola screening at Serbian airports "not rigorous"

BELGRADE -- The World Health Organization has recently said that Europe is "very well prepared" for a possible Ebola outbreak.

However, experiences of travelers arriving from Africa show that airport checks are "not very rigorous."

After it was confirmed that a Spanish nurse became the first person to contract the deadly disease on European soil, WHO announced that the spread of the virus on our continent was "quite unavoidable."

B92 spoke with Mihajlo Cicmilović, a Serbian who worked in Africa, and has just returned to the country.

"In the past year I visited about ten countries, in the western part Ghana, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and in the east the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Uganda, and Tanzania," he told our reporter.

Asked what life was like in Africa, he said, "beautiful, but also sad."

Cicmilović is certain that he was protected from the virus while on the African continent, but said he was aware of the danger that impoverished African countries' healthcare systems cannot deal with on their own.

He said that after landing on Belgrade's Nikola Tesla Airport, he went through all the necessary checks, and described the procedure:

"The system is very simple. You land at the airport, they ask you where you're coming from. You tell them, and how long you stayed, a man, I guess from the Ministry of Health, fills out a firm, and you are under obligation to report to them within 48 hours. It's more like an interview, there is no medical examination, nobody's taking your temperature, unlike in African countries."

Cicmilović traveled home via Istanbul, and when asked about the procedure at...