Air travel is more affordable today compared to the 1950s and 1960s. As more people travel, they can carry bacteria, fungi and viruses from one place to another, infecting almost everyone on their travel route. Longer flights (5 hours to 15 or 18 hours) will mean passengers will be in contact with carriers and breathing stale contaminated cabin air.
Aircrafts had the habit of spraying the entire cabin upon flight landing, leaving passengers on board to breathe whatever insecticide and bacteriocide they wish to spray cabin air with. Passengers have no choice accept to breath whatever it is they are spraying. It feels humiliating having arrived at a port of call and being sprayed upon without knowing what is being sprayed.
A more intriguing thing is why aren't sick passengers removed to sick bay at the port of arrival? Why are sick passengers allowed to travel which coughing terribly on board and in that way, contaminate everyone and especially susceptible passengers who are otherwise healthy?
Forehead touchless thermometers are available today. Even this is not used to detect sick travellers who are spreading air-borne infection in-flight, and on long flights.
Chest infection may take some time to develop. Travellers appear healthy and happy for 2 weeks at their destination, but soon develop some of the worst chest infections in human air travel. Some have have died, and some have survived the ordeal of such a horrible air-borne traveller's disease.
There are many unanswered questions about air-borne diseases contracted by travellers. Who will take the challenge to stop air-borne travel infections from spreading? Who will pay for hospitalisation and medicine costs? Who will attend to the patients' recuperation, which is long and painful? Some hospitals will advise travellers to return to their original country and seek treatment at home. Some travellers fall ill and have no time to return home, and end up in hospital of a foreign country, with huge unpaid bills. Many cases involved student travels to visit friends, family travels to visit students at overseas institutions, and other reasons for travelling.
Insurance schemes and plans are available, but many do not honour their T&C. As such, students, family members and travellers are stuck with not knowing what to do. It is very frightening not knowing how to proceed when being overseas and facing a life/death health problem.
Not everyone has good immunity against all chest infections. Some do, most don't. There are vaccines which can assist if taken at the correct time before a trip. They do help to allay severe infections. Despite taking such steps, some will still fall victim to a new infection which can be fatal within a short time if no emergency treatment is given.
Bronchopneumonia is one of the worst of chest infections which can be picked up by air-travel. Others are tuberculosis (TB) and the flu (H1N1, SARS).
Airport securities and health authorities are only interested to curb H1N1 and SARS, even though they should look into bronchopneumonia and TB among all travellers.
External links
What is bronchopneumonia
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323167.php
Review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173892/pdf/crj-21-4-239.pdf
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