18th September, 2014
Malta has turned away a ship travelling from Guinea with a suspected Ebola case on board after it sought medical assistance, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said Thursday.
Muscat said it was “morally and legally correct” to have prevented the Hong Kong-flagged ship from entering Maltese waters late Wednesday, in spite of a request from the captain for assistance for a sick Filipino passenger.
The MV Western Copenhagen, with 21 people on board, was on its way from Guinea — one of the three countries worst hit by west Africa’s Ebola epidemic — to Ukraine.
An army patrol boat was dispatched to make sure the ship did not enter Maltese waters.
“We do not have much information,” Muscat said. “We had no way of ascertaining whether the captain was understating or overstating the situation. We do not even know if there is more than one suspected case.”
“We do not know the magnitude of the situation and it could be a false alarm. But we will not compromise our health system,” he said.
Valletta said the ship was 40 miles from Sicily and 83 miles from Malta when it asked for medical assistance.
After being turned away from Malta, it is believed to have turned towards Sicily, though the Italian health ministry, navy and coast guard were unable to confirm whether it had requested to land in Italy.
According to the marinetraffic.com website, which tracks ships in real time, the Western Copenhagen cut across from near Malta to close to Sicily on Thursday morning before appearing to turn at around 1200 GMT and head back out into the open sea.