EDITORIAL - Door now ajar for Ebola to slip into Phl

Everybody seems too focused on the Filipino peacekeepers from Liberia who underwent the required 21-day quarantine at Caballo Island. Having finished the quarantine without exhibiting any symptoms of the dreaded Ebola now on a rampage in western Africa, they will now be allowed to go home to their families. But first they will be honored for their successful mission of serving under the United Nations.

Away from all that attention, seven Filipino OFWs from Sierra Leone, another west African country ravaged by the cureless disease, quietly slipped into the country. Five of them were luckily intercepted by the Department of Health and quickly whisked to a different quarantine area at the old Nayong Filipino near the Manila airport. But two of the returnees managed to slip through the net and are now presumably with their families and mingling with others in their communities.

How could this happen? Weren't the authorities, particularly those from the DOH, supposed to be on their toes to make sure that anyone returning from western Africa would all be met at the airport and promptly whisked off for mandatory quarantine? Weren't the DOH and other authorities supposed to be alerted by Philippine foreign service officials at the returnees' points of embarkation that they would be coming?

The DOH was so totally caught by surprise by the arrival of the Sierra Leone OFWs that the quarantine area to which the five were brought were not ready for their arrival. Some of the five now being quarantined are complaining of very poor conditions and have voiced concern that they might actually get sick from the stressful and unhealthy environment.

How could the DOH allow itself to be caught by surprise over such a crucial health issue. It is not enough to beg for public understanding and indulgence, as one quarantine officer did during a media interview. Heads should roll over this very terrible lapse. The president should crack the whip on acting health secretary Janette Garin who, right from the start, never gave Ebola the seriousness it deserves (remember her picnic to Caballo with the just-as-clueless AFP chief?).

The DOH does not even know what to do with the two OFWs who managed to slip through the airport undetected, judging by the early pronouncements of officials interviewed after the incident. All that one quarantine official said was that they will try to locate the two Filipinos. Is that it? They will just try to locate? What if they fail to locate the two?

The fact that there are thousands of Filipinos in western Africa, many of them sufficiently rendered anxious by the Ebola scare that they may all want to come home, should have made this matter a national security concern and as such deserving of everyone's full and undivided attention. And yet look what happened. Seven managed to come home without anybody knowing. It was only providential that five were intercepted at the airport. But what of the other two?