11 OFWs stir up Mabalacat

MABALACAT, Pampanga — Health workers here were thrown into a frenzy last Friday as they scrambled to track down 11 overseas workers who arrived from Hong Kong and mainland China, both hard-hit by the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak.

Dr. Oscar Aurelio, municipal health officer, said seven of the OFWs were located two to three hours after the office of Mayor Marino Morales got a notification from the Bureau of Immigration that a total of 11 OFWs from this town had flown in from Hong Kong and China.

The four other returning OFWs, however, could not be located because the notification, coursed through the Department of the Interior and Local Government, did not specify their addresses.

Of the 11, only one came from China, although the immigration bureau could not say which part of the mainland he had stayed, Aurelio said.

He said this was the first time that local officials got such a notification from the bureau.

Meanwhile, the ashes of a 57-year-old woman — the second Filipina to die of SARS in Hong Kong — will not be buried until the 14-day quarantine of one of her children, who brought home the cremated remains last Wednesday, is over.

The SARS victim’s child flew in from Hong Kong along with two companions who went directly to their hometowns in Cavite, Aurelio said.

"Everything is fine with the victim’s child who has volunteered for home quarantine. He is doing well. He is being checked regularly and he even sends text messages to us on how he has been feeling," he said.

Health officials said the ashes are free of the SARS virus and are safe to be kept at home.

Aurelio said the seven OFWs they had tracked down have not shown any SARS symptoms so far and have confined themselves at home for the prescribed quarantine.

"The problem is that we got the notification from the immigration bureau rather late. Some of the 11 who arrived had been in the country for a week already when we got the notification at about 2 p.m. last Friday," he said.

No complete addresses were mentioned for the four "missing" returning workers, except for the barangays where they reside.

"One case is in Madapdap, which is a very densely populated area," Aurelio said.

Madapdap is one of the biggest resettlement areas built for victims of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. It has tens of thousands of families living in small, cramped dwellings.

But Aurelio said Morales has mobilized all barangay health emergency response teams, which he organized recently to monitor arrivals of residents from abroad, particularly from SARS-hit countries.

"I expect that the four others would be tracked down today, but I would like to stress to the people of Mabalacat that there is no reason to panic. Those who arrived could not have been allowed to board the plane in Hong Kong if they were not feeling well. They also surely underwent quarantine procedures at the airport in Manila," Aurelio said.

He, however, said the other four OFWs must still be identified and monitored as a precautionary measure.

He noted that the immigration bureau’s surprise notification last Friday has brought to light potential problems due to the lack of health personnel. "What if scores of OFWs arrive at the same time?" he asked.