Posted: May 4th, 2015

public health

In this week’s forum, the focus in on the use of border control in regard to outbreaks of infectious disease with the potential for rapid international spread.
In particular the aim is to explore airport screening measures, evidence for their utility and how they feature in national response plans.
I would like to first direct our discussion to Australian measures for controlling the spread of disease through its borders. Hopefully some discussion will include comparing Australian measures to other countries to judge how effective they are.
If any of you have entered Australia over the last few months you will know that there is a health card that needs to be submitted asking if you are coming from west Africa. This is, of course, to highlight potential exposure to the Ebola outbreak (1). Do you think that a questionnaire is sufficient? Would this measure be sufficient for countries closer to the initial outbreak (such as European ports in London)?
Hong Kong has implemented ‘fever scanners’ in their international airports since the 2003 outbreak (2), and while Australia also rushed to order some of these for influenza outbreaks research has shown that they are quite ineffective. Do you think more technological screening measures such as these should be used in Australia for border control? What are other examples of similar technology?
Furthermore, should these border control methods be used constantly or only in the case of outbreak? Australia has a very stringent quarantine system already in place for what you can and cannot bring into the country (and into the state from national travel), should there be more constant detection for human disease trafficking or would the costs outweigh the benefits?