Ebola Virus Outbreak 2014 News Update: No Screening for Virus on Flights Arriving to UK

More than 3,400 people in West Africa have died from the recent outbreak of the Ebola virus. Despite the obvious dangers and the apparent world wide efforts at containing the deadly disease, Public Health England has said that there are currently no plans to introduce a screening process for those on flights that enter the United Kingdom. 

The reason for this is that it was not recommended by the World Health Organization and would mean screening hundreds of people that do not have a decent probability of having contracting Ebola.

PHE reports that the country has a number of quality measures to implement if anyone enters the U.K. with Ebola. These include transferring the infected person to a quarantine ward.

"Our robust well-developed and well-tested NHS systems for managing unusual infectious diseases are all active permanently and always available and regularly tested and proven to be effective," Dr. Brian McCloskey, director of global health at PHE, said per BBC.

"The overall risk of Ebola to the U.K. remains low."

The United States has had screening systems in place for some time. Despite this, one individual who contracted the virus was able to enter the U.S. from Africa. He is currently being treated for the disease in isolation in Texas. His family has also been quarantined.

Despite the Home Office insisting that there would be no change of policy when it comes to dealing with Ebola, Norman Baker, minister in the department said that Ebola finding its way to Europe is a, "very concerning development," and that new measures of control must be established in order to prevent the disease from further spreading.

The Independent sites a research group from a number of American universities that have been monitoring the spread of the disease and which concluded the U.K. is the third mostly likely country outside of Africa to experience an outbreak of Ebola.

The White House and President Obama have repeatedly ruled out banning flights to the U.S. from affected countries. Due to the amount of higher grade medical care in the U.S., President Obama does not believe that an outbreak in the U.S. is likely, but has remained steadfast in his belief that, "we don't have a lot of margin for error."

In Brittain, PHE believes that the country also has enough of a proven track record to deal with diseases and the risk for an outbreak in the U.K. is still low.