- JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa's
medical experts are alarmed by an outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic Ebola
Fever virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo - fearing that infected
travellers could spread the disease here.
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- It is was not uncommon for infected African travellers
to come to SA for treatment and this could infected medical personnel,
experts fear.
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- Over the past decade at least two Africans - a doctor
Gabon and just recently a doctor from Nigeria - had died in SA hospitals
while seeking medical attention. And the Gabonese doctor had infected a
local nurse, who also died.
- See outbreak story:
- http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=564848
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- Nigerian doctor died of Ebola in Unitas Hospital, Pretoria
in 2007
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- This warning comes after World Health Organisation officials
confirmed yesterday that 120 deaths have already occurred among 300 sick
people and that five people had tested positive for the virus in the Congo
said its spokesman, Gregory Hartl.
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- Professor Robert Swanepoel , a consultant in the special
pathogens unit at South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases,
said while the fatal haemorrhagic disease occurred mainly in the Congo,
Nigeria and Sierra Leone, infected people are known to travel to South
Africa and other parts of the world for medical treatment.
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- Swanepoel said 'it was not uncommon for medical evacuation
companies to transport infected patients to South Africa, as was the case
recently when an doctor infected with ebola was brought into the country.'
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- No cure for Ebola
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- The doctor, from Nigeria, was treated at the Unitas Hospital,
outside Pretoria.
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- Swanepoel said: "He obviously died as there is no
cure for the disease. It is known that people come to South Africa for
treatment."
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- South Africa has the best medical facilities on the entire
continent - dating back from the apartheid-days.
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- Three airlines - SAA, Hewa Bora Airlines and Kenya Airways
- operate flights between Johannesburg and the Congo capital of Kinshasa.
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- SAA is the only carrier that flies direct between the
two destinations, four days a week, while the other two carriers have stop-overs
in Lumbumbashi and Nairobi respectively. SAA said it had noted the reports
of "a suspected haemorrhagic fever outbreak in a remote part of the
Congo".
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- Jaco Folmer, medical director of SAA-Netcare Travel Clinics,
said the people most at risk were health workers in the affected areas.
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- Two Ebola deaths in SA in 1996
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- In 1996, a nurse in Johannesburg was diagnosed with ebola
haemorrhagic fever and a frantic search ensued to locate the source, a
doctor in Gabon who had sought treatment for his illness in South Africa.
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- The nurse died, but the spread of the infection was prevented.
Folmer said the risk of contracting the virus was greater when travelling.
- "Infected people start bleeding from the nose and
ears and [should be] kept in strict isolation.
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- "What is even scarier is that there are no tell-tale
signs for the disease, so you can't tell one infected person from another
just by looking at them."
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- http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=562209
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