Days after being criticized for breaking their own Ebola quarantine protocol, the military and the Department of Health on Tuesday exempted four just-returned United Nations peacekeepers from Liberia were sent to a hospital that was not designated an Ebola facility.
“The decision to let them undergo the quarantine at the AFP Medical Center is based on the guidance from DOH,” said Armed Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Harold Cabunoc.
Cabunoc explained that the four Filipino soldiers, who were among the country’s 112 UN peacekeepers in Liberia, were cleared after Ebola screening in Monrovia.
When asked whether the screening test was the same one given to people from other countries who later developed Ebola, Cabunoc said “the DOH can discuss further details about their quarantine procedures and duration.”
Col. Roberto Ancan, the commander of the Peacekeeping Operations Center, also declined to comment on why the four peacekeepers were brought to the AFPMC on V. Luma in Quezon City instead of the announced quarantine facility on Caballo Island at the mouth of Manila Bay.
“Let the DOH answer you that question,” Ancan said, adding that the four soldiers were enlisted personnel who stayed behind in Liberia to arrange with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force for transportation of their military equipment.
The military and the DOH came under fire last week for breaking their own announced quarantine protocol when they visited the peacekeepers isolated at Caballo island.
Armed Forces chief Gen. Gregorio Catapang later belittled the break of quarantine protocol because he was told that Ebola is only contagious when a person is already showing symptoms of the illness that has already killed more than 5,000 people all over the world.
But Dr. Anthony Leachon, president of the Philippine College of Physicians, said the point was that they broke their own quarantine protocol.
“It was a breach of protocol,” Leachon said. “Quarantine is an enforced isolation during the 21-day incubation period…. It might send the wrong signal.”
But DOH spokesperson Dr. Lyndon Lee Suy said there was no need to bring the four soldiers to Caballo Island since “there were only four of them” and their quarantine was already set to end on Dec. 3 so it was decided they could be isolated at the AFPMC. (with reports from MST/Florante Solmerin, Francisco Tuyay, Macon Araneta)