SA, Mpuma, ready for Moz Ebola threat

Medical workers of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy hospital of Monrovia wearing a protective suit work at the high-risk area of the hospital, the surgical section where Ebola patients are being treated. (AFP)

Mbombela - While neighbouring Mozambique is on a list of 15 countries at risk of animal-to-human transmission of Ebola, South Africa is not.

This follows a study by the University of Oxford in England whose list also includes Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Togo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar and Malawi.

"The reason South Africa is not on the Oxford list is because the country is extremely ready. Every port of entry into the country is on high alert. The border officials are equipped to detect anything and everything and deal with it," said national health spokesperson Joe Maila on Friday.

Maila said Mpumalanga, which borders Mozambique, was also ready to deal with any incident.

"We have already identified 11 hospitals throughout the country, including Rob Ferreira Hospital [in Mbombela] and have prepared them to deal with any kind of a  haemorrhaging fever,” Maila said.

There are five known strains of Ebola. The one that has currently broken out in West Africa is named Zaire and is considered the most virulent.

The other strains, named Sudan, Taï Forest and Bundibugyo, have caused contained outbreaks in Ivory Coast, Sudan, and Uganda in the past.

According to the World Health Organisation, the Reston species had not caused any known outbreaks.

Media have reported that until this year’s epidemic, Ebola did not exist in West Africa. Now with a death toll exceeding 2 000 people, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, scientists still don’t fully understand how Ebola arrived from Central Africa, where outbreaks of this strain of the virus had occurred in the past.

Oxford University's journal eLife explains that the virus could have spread through fruit bats that transmitted it to other animals through dense forest including 22 countries.

“Our map shows the likely ‘reservoir’ of Ebola virus in animal populations, and this is larger than has been previously appreciated,” said the study’s author Nick Golding, a researcher at Oxford University’s department of zoology. 

“This does not mean that transmission to humans is inevitable in these areas; only that all the environmental and epidemiological conditions suitable for an outbreak occur there."