Engineer under observation for Ebola goes missing

An engineer who had recently arrived from Ebola virus-affected African nation Liberia and was to remain under observation for a month has gone missing from his home state Uttarakhand, officials said on Wednesday.

An engineer who had recently arrived from Ebola virus-affected African nation Liberia and was to remain under observation for a month has gone missing from his home state Uttarakhand, officials said on Wednesday.

On his arrival on August 26 at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Aiport, Mohit Chandra was screened for the deadly virus that has claimed more than 700 lives in Liberia, the only African nation now in the grip of the outbreak.

The health department grew concerned when a team of health officials from the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project, which had been monitoring Chandra, reported that his home in Haldwani, about 300km from Dehradun, had been locked and his phone switched off for the past four days.

Uttarakhand director general health Dr GS Joshi said he would soon be informing the Union health ministry that Chandra might be staying in Delhi as repeated attempts to trace him have failed.

The Centre had asked the state governments to keep it updated about people arriving from the four African nations—Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria—hit by the deadly Ebola epidemic.

The Ebola virus, transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids, has killed more than 1,500 people in these countries since the start of the year.