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MAZ calls for Ebola screening and treatment centers
Lusaka, August 25, 2014, ZANIS — The Medical Association of Zambia (MAZ) has advised government to create separate screening and treatment centres for all suspected Ebola cases.
MAZ president Aaron Mujajati says establishing the anti-Ebola centres in the country will help curb the further spread of the virus to other health facility users.
Dr Mujajati further said the would-be Ebola treatment and screening centres should not be located near hospitals, any health centres or any public institutions.
ZANIS reports that the MAZ president said this in a telephone interview in Lusaka today.
And Dr. Mujajati said his association has embarked on sensitising programme for all health personnel on how to handle suspected Ebola cases.
He further disclosed that his association is in the process of producing a brochure to sensitise the general public on the Ebola virus.
Dr. Mujajati has since called on the media and other key stakeholders to play an active role in sensitising members of the public on the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Dr Mujajati has called on Zambians to be on high alert of the Ebola virus which has since broken out in the neighbouring Democratic republic of Congo (DRC).
Two people who were diagnosed with Ebola in the neighbouring DRC have since been reported dead.
Dr. Mujajati said MAZ will soon visit the one stop Kasumba Lesa boarder post in Chililabombwe to assess how the Ebola screening exercise is being conducted.
The outbreak,, which has affected the countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, now has more than a thousand cases, in which more than half of those are confirmed.
Infections of Ebola virus cause a viral haemorrhagic (bleeding) fever officially known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever or Ebola virus disease, a deadly disease with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent.
Though more concentrated in parts of Africa, history shows that cases of infection have popped up in other countries as well, particularly here in the Philippines.
Ebola was first detected in 1976 during simultaneous outbreaks that occurred in Nzara, Sudan, and Yambuku in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The virus received its name from the Ebola River found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In the past 38 years, major outbreaks of the virus happened six times in the Democratic Republic of Congo, three times in South Sudan, four times in Gabon, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo, and once in Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa.
The recent 2014 Ebola outbreaks are also in West African countries.
