Fri, Feb 10 2012

Bulgarian customs hustle with statements of no swine flu infection

Thu, Jul 02 2009 10:26 CET

byRene Beekman

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Bulgarian customs hustle with statements of no swine flu infection

Photo: Georgi Kozhouharov

Bulgarian customs have allegedly started asking travellers for medical statements that the traveller was not infected with the swine flu or N1H1 virus.

Dutch medical news broadcaster medicalfacts.nl, which services the professional medical community in The Netherlands, reported that the documents were allegedly also demanded from travellers who were passing through the country en route to Turkey. Not having such a document could allegedly be bought off with amounts said to vary between 10 and several hundred euro, medicalfacts.nl said.

The Bulgarian embassy in The Netherlands said there was no such requirement from the Bulgarian governement. Travellers who were asked for such a medical statement, were encouraged to report this to authorities.

The Royal Dutch Medical Association KNMG said doctors in The Netherlands were not allowed to issue any medical statements about their patients as those would violate doctor-patient confidentiality.

As a practical work-around, the KNMG said doctors could issue a statement that patients did not show any symptoms of infection. Given the incubation time of swine flu, which can be as short as one day, this would not be very useful information.

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