According to Sunday’s edition of The Times newspaper, president of the Association of Public Health Directors, Jim McManus, emphasized that this decision exposes refugees and hotel workers where they are transferred to avoidable and preventable risks, and increases the burden on the area’s sanitation services.

The newspaper said dozens of people suspected of being infected with diphtheria had been transferred in recent weeks from the Manston camp in southern England to hotel facilities paid for by the Government, waiting for their asylum applications to be processed. .

However, it is feared health controls in the camps have collapsed, and health authorities are not being informed if migrants arriving in their towns have undergone clinical tests, have been infected or exposed to disease, or if they are under medical supervision. treatment.

Alarms sounded after learning that a migrant who died last week after being hospitalized in Manston had the disease, although the actual cause of death is still under investigation.

In remarks this Sunday to Sky News television, the Secretary for Transport, Mark Harper, said that the diphtheria cases detected in the country were brought in by refugees themselves crossing the English Channel, and assured that the risk of spreading to the rest of society was very low.

In the United Kingdom there is a vaccination program against this highly contagious disease which attacks the throat and nasal passages and sometimes causes ulcers on the skin, and as was reported a few weeks ago, the person detained in Manston is also receiving the vaccine.

More than 40,000 people have crossed the strait that separates southern England from the northern coast of France so far this year in rubber boats and other flimsy boats.

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