Thread: Cruises change itineraries due to Ebola concerns

Cruises change itineraries due to Ebola concerns

Several cruise lines have changed itineraries due to concerns over Ebola, canceling port stops in West Africa.

Holland America Line's MS Rotterdam is cancelling three ports of call in Ghana, Gambia and Senegal and will be replaced with an added overnight in Cape Town. (Holland America Line)


Several cruise lines have changed itineraries due to concerns over Ebola, canceling port stops in West Africa.


On Holland America Line's 35-day African Explorer cruise aboard the MS Rotterdam, from Cape Town, South Africa, to Southampton, England, three ports of call in Ghana, Gambia and Senegal will be replaced with an added overnight in Cape Town, an added overnight in Cape Verde and a stop in Tangier, Morocco, according to Holland America spokesman Erik Elvejord.


Elvejord said all guests were notified of the change in the trip, which departs Nov. 15.


CruiseCritic.com reported that cruise companies Regent Seven Seas, Seabourn and Fred. Olsen have also canceled port calls and changed itineraries to avoid areas that could potentially be affected.


The countries hardest-hit by the Ebola outbreak — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — were not on the itineraries to begin with, but Senegal, which has reported one case, shares a border with Guinea.


Other lines including Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian said they do not have ships traveling in the affected areas.


http://www.abreakingnews.com/travel/...s-h242457.html

Obama won't stop Ebola travel because....


He is AFRICAN and has loyalty to his homeland.

He was born in Kenya and a lot of the people in Africa are Muslims like him.

Do you know how many people he will piss off if he allows our flights to stop bringing in "his people". Every other country has halted flights including France and the UK, but not "the land of the free".

We are royally ****ed. All you bastards who voted for him, is this the hope you wanted? We can't change what we are seeing but thanks for nothing.

We are all about to die from EBOLA because you idiots voted in an African and it's airborne you ****tards.

Obama Hints At Ebola Travel Curbs

5:38 PM 10/06/2014
Neil Munro
White House Correspondent


President Barack Obama said Monday that officials are developing additional procedures to stop Ebola-carrying foreigners from flying into the United States.


The federal government is “going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screening, both at the source [in Africa] and here in the United States,” Obama told reporters during a staged meeting with cabinet officials. Obama not describe the procedures, or how extensively they would be implemented.


The White House’s formal “read-out” describing the meeting said that officials “discussed options to enhance airport screenings in the United States.”


The comments may be a PR move to mollify worried Americans.


However, they’re likely a policy reversal, because they contradict repeated recent statements from Obama’s deputies that the administration was not considering a travel ban on people living in the diseased-countries, despite rising public support for a ban.


Obama’s new statement matches a statement from Obama’s main spokesman, Josh Earnest. ”What we’re looking to do is review these screening measures,” Earnest said Oct. 6.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/06/ob...-travel-curbs/

October 6

How Many Flights Will be Detained Because of Ebola?

This just may become a daily event. At Orlando International Airport (MCO), a Southwest flight arriving from Houston was detained because a passenger was sick. Seems he mentioned that he had visited Kenya a couple months ago. That was enough to contact the Center for Disease Control (CDC) for advice. The other passengers had to remain on the aircraft until this man was checked out for Ebola symptoms. No doubt there was no information relayed to the passengers while this event unfolded. Fortunately his symptoms did not match the fatal contagious disease.
Unfortunately, the potential exists where it may take a couple hours to check out an illness. That means missed connecting flights and passenger travel plans delayed. Of course it’s important to be sensitive to this extremely dangerous illness but even CDC says there has to be a balance between proactive containment and the needs of passengers.
Adding to the Ebola scare, the first case of the disease outside of Africa was reported in Spain. Meanwhile, some politicians want to limit travel due to this dreaded illness. Screening travelers before leaving West Africa certainly makes sense but as the CDC says, there has to be a reasonable balance. Hopefully the airports, cooperating with CDC, can develop a protocol quickly to minimize this kind of travel disruption. The way it is now, nearly every instance of illness on a plane can appear at first to be similar to Ebola symptoms.

http://pearlsoftravelwisdom.boarding...etained-ebola/

Ebola - Daily update for travelers - eTNW

www.etnw.co.za/ebola.aspx
12 hours ago - Travel incidents: The African Travel and Tourism Association reported that .... Costs incurred because of a cancellation due to a travel ban would not be covered.

1. W. Africa Ebola crisis hits tourism, compounds hunger in Gambia
   
2. West Africa Ebola crisis hits tourism, compounds hunger in Gambia

West Africa Ebola crisis hits tourism, compounds hunger in Gambia
Reuters
By Misha Hussain October 1, 2014 5:55 AM

By Misha Hussain
Related Stories

DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Pestilence, cyclical droughts and floods, and the West Africa Ebola crisis have pushed hunger to record levels in Gambia, where 200,000 people need urgent food assistance, the United Nations says.

Tourism is a significant source of income for the country, and even though Gambia has not seen cases of Ebola, the outbreak in the region has caused visitor numbers to plummet by 60 percent compared to last year, said Ade Mamonyane Lekoetje, the U.N. representative for Gambia.

“In 2011-12 we had the floods and droughts, then in 2013 we had the birds eating all the crops, and now we have Ebola threatening the tourist industry, a lifeline to farmers who need to top up their household income,” Lekoetje told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a donor gathering in Dakar.

"The government is keen to emphasize Gambia is Ebola-free," she added, noting that the true impact of the outbreak will not be known until after the tourist high season from October to April.

She said a third of the country's 1.8 million people are struggling to have three square meals a day and many have had to sell cattle and take children out of school to buy food.

Ebola - which has killed more than 3,000 people in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea since March - has compounded Gambia's woes. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say some 1.4 million are at risk in the region without immediate action.

Gambia says it has mounted surveillance along its borders, halted air travel from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and launched an aggressive Ebola awareness campaign.

“The problem is that tourists tend to think about Africa or West Africa as homogenous, not as individual countries. So Ebola in Sierra Leone has a negative impact on Gambia and other countries in the region,” Lekoetje said.

A sliver of a country sandwiched between northern and southern Senegal, Gambia's beaches are popular among European sunseekers, many of them British. Tourism contributes one-fifth of GDP, according to the CIA Factbook.

Yet U.N. figures indicate more than a third of Gambians live on less than $1.25 a day.

Malnutrition of children under the age of five is at a 10-year high of 25 percent – 10 percent higher than the emergency threshold of 15 percent set by the World Health Organization, according to latest U.N. figures.

EAT WHAT YOU GROW

The U.N. says that some 20 million people are at risk of hunger throughout the Sahel belt stretching from Senegal to Chad, but officials were surprised to see Gambia hit so hard.

“This is a newly emerging phenomenon in Gambia because until now they have been able to manage and be food secure either through agriculture or through other means of livelihood,” said Robert Piper, U.N. coordinator for the Sahel.

Meanwhile, Gambia is pushing to be self-sufficient in the food sector by 2016, regardless of the weather in a country where 80 percent of the population depends on agriculture, said Minister for Social Welfare Omar Sey.

“We are encouraging every Gambian to grow what you eat and eat what you grow, so that we can be food self-sufficient by 2016. Rice and other commodities that can be grown in the Gambia will not be imported,” Sey told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the donor meeting.

“Gambia will no longer need to depend on rain irrigation as the government is moving to take water from the River Gambia, which divides the country in two, as a more reliable source of water.”

Ebola: Japanese Tourist Kawakubo Yuko Suspected of ...

www.ibtimes.co.uk/ebola-japanese-tourist-k...International Business Times


6 hours ago - Fear has gripped the Indian city of Manipur after a Japanese tourist was taken to hospital suspected of contracting Ebola. Kawakubo Yuko was making a ...

Fear has gripped the Indian city of Manipur after a Japanese tourist was taken to hospital suspected of contracting Ebola.
Kawakubo Yuko was making a stopover in Imphal, after visiting five other countries, when she became ill and starting showing symptoms of the deadly virus.
She had checked in at a hotel in the capital after reaching Manipur from Myanmar in south Asia by road.
The 27-year-old is being held at the JN Institute of Medical Sciences, awaiting the results of her Ebola tests.
If she tests positive, Yuko will be sent to an isolation ward at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, according to India's Z News service.
The Indian authorities are reportedly now considering to screen all tourists travelling into Manipur for the disease, which has wiped out more than 3,400 people in Africa.
A Spanish nurse is also waiting to see if she has the disease after she treated priest Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died after catching the virus while working for the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios in the Sierra Leonean city of Lunsar.
Additionally, Thomas Eric Duncan, in Dallas, Texas, is "fighting for his life" after being the first case in the US to contract Ebola after travelling from West Africa.
The increase in the number of suspected cases comes as the World Health Organization assures people the disease is not airborne and can only be transmitted by direct contact with bodily fluids.

Ebola: latest update


What’s new: Equatorial Guinea issues travel ban for Central and West African countries. To view the map and info, click here.

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Photo

A ship carrying a hospital worker who had handled Ebola specimens was returning to Texas. Credit Reuters