Thousands of Nigerian students and others student from West African nations who have been admitted into United Kingdom universities or previously studied there may face tough health screening when they resume for classes September.
According to The Independent on Sunday, the alert by Universities UK, the umbrella body that represents vice-chancellors, was issued because the universities are expecting an influx new and returning students to arrive from West Africa.
While the three countries which have seen the largest number of Ebola cases – Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone – have hardly any students enrolling at UK universities, Nigeria – which has also had confirmed cases – is the fourth largest supplier of international students to UK universities.
In 2012-13, the latest year for which figures are available, a total of 9,630 were enrolled.
A spokesman for the body said, “The issue is very much on universities’ radars. We circulated to universities the publicly available guidance on the topic.”
The guidance makes it clear that any student suspected of having Ebola should immediately be isolated in a side room away from any member of staff or student contact.
“The side room should have dedicated en-suite facilities or at least a dedicated commode,” it says. “The level of staff protection is dependent on the patient’s condition,” the London-based newspaper newspaper said.
It added that “those having any dealings with the patient must take careful hand hygiene precautions, wearing double gloves and a disposable visor.
The guidance told university workers that, “evidence from outbreaks strongly indicates that the main routes of transmission of infection are direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membrane) and indirect contact with environments contaminated with splashes or droplets of blood or body fluids.”
It said that experts “agree that there is no circumstantial or epidemiological evidence of an aerosol transmission risk from patients.”