from this morning's Jakarta Globe:
Flu Blood Tests for Visitors To Bali
With Bali having seen several foreign tourists hospitalized for swine flu, the island's Ngurah Rai International Airport is now requiring all arriving international air passengers to undergo a blood test.
Nyoman Murtiyasa, the head of the airport's health office, said that all passengers arriving from overseas would be required to take a blood test at the airport.
"We are installing the laboratory equipment today," Murtiyasa said on Friday.
A tourist from Melbourne, 22-year-old British passport holder Bobie Masoner, became the country's first confirmed swine flu patient when she was rushed to Sanglah General Hospital in Denpasar shortly after landing a week ago.
She has since been declared healthy and discharged. Three other foreign tourists have also been treated at the hospital on suspicion of having the A (H1N1) virus that causes swine flu, health officials have said.
Murtiyasa said that, initially, the blood test would be prioritized for passengers coming from endemic countries such as Australia, and that their health records would be ascertained while they were still on the plane. "Once they get off the plane, we will ask them to take a blood test," he said, adding that the results would be ready within 30 minutes.
Even though Indonesia only has a few swine flu patients, Murtiyasa said, the country needed to practice extra care because it was surrounded by endemic countries.
Trisno Heryadi, a spokesman for state airport operator Angkasa Pura II, said that Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport had no immediate plan to require blood tests for arriving international passengers. Instead, the airport would use thermal scanners to identify any passengers with a fever. "Any passenger showing flu symptoms will be immediately rushed to the airport medical center," he said.
Bali's health office chief, Nyoman Suteja, said that medical tests had been conducted on passengers who were on board the same plane as Masoner.
So far, Suteja said, Sanglah Hospital has checked Masoner's relatives and eight passengers who were all traveling on the same plane.
"We're monitoring those people and we have given them alert cards," he said, adding that the cards asked for information about recent travel destinations — especially whether they had spent time in an endemic country — as well as their medical records.
Six Indonesians have also been confirmed as having swine flu, although all but one are abroad and will not be allowed to return until they are declared free of the virus, Health Ministry officials have said. The sole Indonesian being treated in the country is a pilot currently hospitalized in Jakarta.
Separately, Gusti Lanang Suartana, head of medical services at Sanglah, said that Masoner and her family were currently isolated at a house in the Jimbaran area just south of the airport. Masoner was released from the hospital after seven days of treatment.
Three patients are still being treated at the hospital, including George Coltman, a 12-year-old Australian whose test results were positive.