Screening for Infectious Diseases at International Airports: The Frankfurt Model

Gaber W, Goetsch U, Diel R, Doerr HW, Gottschalk R. Screening for infectious diseases at international airports: the Frankfurt model. Aviat Space Environ Med 2009; 80:595–600.

Historically, ships brought infectious diseases to the continents of the world, but in this modern era, infectious diseases and pandemics are primarily spread through aviation as a mode of travel. This is a significant issue in the realm of infection control because of the increased potential for the rapid worldwide transmission and spread of disease. Although the transmission of infectious diseases to airline passengers inside an aircraft is a rare occurrence, it is essential to implement entry and exit screening procedures at airports within the context of the International Health Regulations (IHR) in order to slow down the spread of infection, especially during the early phases of a pandemic event. Currently, there are no standardized procedures for health screening at airports, thus allowing individual regional authorities to determine what they deem to be appropriate screening measures for implementation. In this paper, we will discuss a new pragmatic approach for entry and exit screening procedures at international airports, propose a new classification system for contacts within the aircraft, and discuss changing the fixed enforcement of standardized community mitigation measures to the implementation of measures that correspond to specific characteristics of individual pathogenic agents. The proposed catalog of screening measures is aimed at attaining the goals of the IHR, which states that the measures should be reasonable while avoiding inconvenience or harm to passengers and should not be any more disruptive to the smooth handling of passenger traffic than is necessary.