Government mulls high-tech Ebola testing centre

26 Oct, 2014 - 06:10 0 Views
Government mulls high-tech Ebola testing centre

The Sunday Mail

Shamiso Yikoniko – Health Reporter

The Ministry of Health and Child Care intends to construct a US$7 million high-tech laboratory which will, among other functions, conduct Ebola tests.

The facility will become the fifth in Africa, and second in the region after South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases Laboratory on which Zimbabwe presently relies.

Other African countries with similar testing centres are Senegal, Nigeria and Cameroon. Mr Douglas Mangwanya — the ministry’s laboratory services director — said a local financier will help set up the facility.

Mr Mangwanya would not be drawn into giving the construction timeframe, though his epidemiology and disease control counterpart, Dr Portia Manangazira, indicated it would take significant time.

According to research, such a laboratory is tailor-made to handle dangerous and exotic agents that pose high individual risks of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections.

It also deals with agents which cause severe to fatal diseases without vaccines or treatment such as Ebola and other haemorrhagic fevers.

Since the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Zimbabwe has taken several precautions, including screening travellers from affected countries.

Over 700 travellers have been screened, but none tested positive.

A Congolese student was admitted at Harare’s Wilkins Infectious Diseases Hospital two weeks ago after exhibiting symptoms of the deadly disease.

Doctors treated the student for malaria and later discharged her.

So far, Ebola has killed nearly 5 000 people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

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