Zimbabwe’s health minister on Tuesday said the country was on high alert after a cross-border trader died in the prime tourist resort of Victoria Falls on Christmas Day from a suspected viral haemorrhagic fever.
In Johannesburg, meanwhile, virologists said they had received samples from Zimbabwe and were in the process of conducting tests for various haemorrhagic fevers including ebola, Marburg disease and Congo fever.
Zimbabwean Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said his ministry was working closely with the United Nations’ World Health Organisation (WHO) in investigating the matter and to contain the virus.
”The Ministry of Health and WHO are on top of the situation,” said Parirenyatwa. ”So tourists should not worry.”
Samples from the man, who had bloody diarrhoea, blood in the urine, and a fever, were flown to a specialised laboratory in neighbouring South Africa for tests and results were expected later on Tuesday.
”It is a suspected viral haemorrhagic fever; nobody has confirmed it [that it is ebola],” Parirenyatwa said.
”We will let the world know of the results as soon as they are out,” said the minister.
The 49-year-old Zimbabwean fell ill in the southern Angolan town of Lubango. He was admitted to Victoria Falls’s main hospital where he died last Thursday.
”He was referred in a very serious condition … and he travelled in dedicated transport. We know he did not mix with others, he went straight from the border to the hospital.
Ebola is one of a variety of highly contagious viral haemorrhagic fevers found on the continent.
Ebola is the most severe of the fevers, which can be transmitted from animals to human beings and through direct contact with body fluids and secretions.
Health professionals at Victoria Falls have been placed on full alert and a health officer has been posted to Kasane border post with Namibia.
Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries have been informed of the suspected case so they can put their surveillance systems on alert.
An ebola outbreak that had claimed 29 lives in northwestern Congo, north of Angola, by early December was being brought under control, the WHO said two weeks ago.
An epidemic in 2001 in Central Africa claimed more than 100 lives. — Sapa-AFP