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CHOL OF DUTY
Emergency plane evacuation at France’s Perpignan airport amid fears child on board has highly contagious CHOLERA
A PLANE arriving from Africa was evacuated at a major airport in the South of France today following warnings that a child on board was carrying Cholera.
The emergency alert took place in Perpignan, and involved an ASL Airlines flight from Oran, the port city in Algeria.
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Airport spokesman Denis Leluc said: "There was a fear for the health of the child, who was evacuated to the city hospital for examination.
"There were 147 other passengers, as well as crew, and all of them were warned about the dangers of Cholera. The eight-year-old child is still undergoing tests."
A spokesman for the prefecture covering Perpignan said the Boeing 737 landed at 13.45 on Wednesday, and that the child was rushed away by waiting emergency services staff.
Others were made to wash their hands with disinfectant, and all their details were taken for future monitoring.
The eight-year-old child is still undergoing tests."
Airport spokesperson
"The warning had come from the medical authorities in Algiers," said the source, referring to the capital of Algeria.
Perpignan is on the Mediterranean coast and close to the French border in an area packed with holidaymakers at this time of year, including many from Britain.
There was a fatal outbreak of Cholera in Algeria that killed two in early August, but the country’s health minister Mokhtar Hasellaoui said it was "now under control".
The disease is an infection of the small intestine by strains of the Vibrio Cholerae bacterium. It causes up to 130,000 deaths a year – mainly in Africa and South East Asia.
Unsafe water and food contaminated with human faeces is the main cause of it spreading, along with undercooked seafood.
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Cholera is relatively easy to treat through rehydration, but it can kill in a few hours if symptoms are ignored.
It is comparatively rare in developed countries, including those in the European Union, because of good water sanitation and effective treatments.
There were frequent outbreaks in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, when sailors arriving from Africa and India imported the so-called "Blue Death".
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