The Assistant Minister for Health, Veena Bhatnagar has reassured that the ministry is working on a preparedness and response plan to prevent the Ebola virus entering the country.

Ms Bhatnagar said senior officials from the ministry met World Health Organization [WHO] officials in Nadi starting on Wednesday and were working on drafting and finalising the plan.

“There is a multi- agency technical advisory group meeting taking place in Nadi and they’ve managed to finalise some border control issues regarding preparedness for Ebola. We hope to finalise the preparedness and response plan by Friday,” she said.

She said the ministry would not make any further comments on the matter as they do not want to panic the people.

Meanwhile, a 57- year old Queensland nurse was assessed in Cairns Hospital in Australia last week for the deadly Ebola virus. She had earlier volunteered with Red Cross to help combat the outbreak in West Africa.

According to CNN, the World Health Organization estimates that there would be 5000 to 10,000 new Ebola cases weekly in West Africa by the first week of December.

Officially, WHO has reported a total of only 8914 Ebola cases in the entire months-long outbreak, but it has said that the total is under-reported.

According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention based, in the United States, as of October 12 there was a total of 8997 Ebola cases, 5006 laboratory confirmed cases and 4493 deaths.

Feedback: ana.sovaraki@fijisun.com.fj