Foreign companies require medical test on catering staff in southern Algeria

Foreign companies operating in southern Algeria gave instructions to their catering staff to undergo medical tests to detect the (H1N1) swine flu virus, according to a catering company owner.

• Algerian authorities took exceptional prevention measures at the international airport of Hassi Messaoud to receive foreign workers coming from various countries especially from America and Australia.
• Algerian health ministry considers Hassi Messaoud a ‘danger area’ due to busy air traffic.
• Foreign oil workers’ bases also took a set of preventive measures such as the necessity of having disinfecting pharmaceutical substances to wash hands for all the staff.
• Some workers constantly put on medical masks to avoid any contamination from people coming from outside the country.
• Those measures are not a state of alert as any case of swine flu was announced. They are preventive measures adopted by the health ministry against this epidemic. Yet, foreign companies added more measures involving catering staff to ensure the safety of their employees.