"The Australian health system is a very strong one, but not every health system in our region is equally strong. It's potentially catastrophic for our neighbourhood if a country in our region with a weaker health system has an outbreak of Ebola." An outbreak of Ebola within the Asian region could be "potentially catastrophic", says Labor MP Tanya Plibersek. Credit:Andrew Taylor Health Minister Peter Dutton said Labor's calls were "reckless" because Australia did not have a guarantee that any personnel who might contract the virus in West Africa would receive treatment. Mr Dutton said the risk to Australia remained "very low" and he was confident nations such as China, Japan and South Korea would be well-prepared to handle any cases. He said Australia was preparing to assist with any cases that might occur in neighbouring Pacific nations such as Papua New Guinea or the Solomon Islands.

"There are assets out of Darwin that we can rapidly deploy that include field hospitals and health experts from around the country in similar way to that which we responded to the Bali bombings or to the tsunami," Mr Dutton said. There were more than 84,000 flights between Asia and Australia in 2013, carrying more than 17 million passengers, according to federal government figures. British Prime Minister David Cameron has called for the international community to do more to tackle the outbreak including providing personnel, and Japan has revealed it is preparing to deploy medical workers to West Africa. More than 9000 people have contracted the virus, which has already claimed more than 4500 lives. The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that the number of Ebola cases in Sierra Leone and Liberia is doubling every 20 days, and by January could reach 1.4 million cases on present trends.

Fairfax Media understands major international airlines have begun war-gaming the commercial and passenger safety implications of the Ebola virus jumping beyond West Africa if it were to turn up in heavily populated parts of the world such as Asia. It comes amid fears of an outbreak in Dallas, Texas, where one death has occurred and a number of health workers have been either infected or exposed. Dallas is a major hub for the Australian national carrier Qantas. US Airlines suffered a 7 per cent drop in value on Thursday in a reflection of the growing public anxiety about the Ebola crisis. While no cases have yet reached Asia, the WHO's Director of Health Security and Emergencies for the Western Pacific Region, Li Ailan told Deutsche Welle radio it remained a possibility, and "if it did come, the consequences of not dealing effectively with this could be huge."

Speaking in Manila this week, WHO director-general Margaret Chan noted that 21st-century societies were "interconnected (and) interdependent ... as never before," adding that "when a deadly and dreaded virus hits the destitute and spirals out of control, the whole world is put at risk.". Sanjaya Senanayake, an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Australian National University and an infectious diseases physician, said the arrival of the virus in Asia would be "a big worry," because of the frequent transport links between the region and Australia, but noted Ebola was less easily transmitted than some diseases such as influenza. Grant Hill-Cawthorne of the University of Sydney said previous disease outbreaks in the region, such as SARS and bird flu, had made Asian nations better prepared to cope with disease outbreaks. Loading "We do have first-rate hospitals in those transport hubs (such as Singapore and Hong Kong) which would be able to put in place good infection control, be able to diagnose early on, and so you're unlikely to get much onward transmission," he said.

with Rachel Olding