There has been criticism over Egypt’s handing of a group of tourists who saw their children taken to makeshift hospitals after passport officials suspected them of having swine flu.
Up to 40 children were taken out of the airport and kept in the hospital for days when they were believed to be carrying the influenza strain. Newspaper reports that some children were kept apart from their parents for up to five days.
Parents reported how policemen grabbed their children ‘without warning’, saying that as their temperature was 38C they needed to be taken to hospital. The officials at Sharm El Sheik airport used hidden thermal imaging cameras to scan the children’s body temperature as they came through customs.
Sarah and Chris Kemp said that their passports were taken at gunpoint, and the policemen refused to return the passport of their daughter, Ellie, eight. They complained that the ‘hospital’ that their children were confined to was filthy and filled with mosquitos, while they were forced to sleep on urine-stained mattresses with about 30 other families.
Another family, the Plants, said that they were told they would be arrested if they took their son Zachariah out of the hospital, which they claimed was infected with rats.
While some of the children kept in hospital tested positive for the swine flu strain of
influenza
, others didn’t, though their parents were afraid they would pick up an infection in the hospital. Those who were treated were prescribed Tamiflu and are recovering well.
The Foreign Office said that there was little they could do about the situation as the ‘measures have been put in place by the Egyptian authorities.”