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Dr Parirenyatwa

VICTORIA FALLS — The Southern African Development Community (Sadc) will come up with a regional position regarding its response to the Ebola outbreak at the conclusion of the regional leaders meeting currently underway in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.  Chairperson of the Sadc Council of Health Ministers David Parirenyatwa told Xinhua at the on-going 34th Sadc Summit of Heads of State and Government yesterday that the region needs to come up with a joint response to the outbreak which has claimed more than 1,000 lives in West Africa since the first cases were detected in March this year.

Sadc has so far not recorded any confirmed case of the deadly disease. Member countries in the region have responded differently to the outbreak, with some screening passengers and discouraging travel to the affected countries while others have taken stricter measures like banning travel to the four afflicted countries of Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Parirenyatwa, who is also Zimbabwe’s Minister of Health and Child Care, said the summit will discuss and issue a statement on the Ebola outbreak.
“I feel there is need to have a consensus in Sadc on that (banning people from travelling to the affected countries). We recently met as Sadc ministers of health so we want to take a joint approach in line with international health regulations in consultation with WHO,” the minister said.

The minister said Zimbabwe, apart from screening air passengers for possible Ebola symptoms, had also taken measures to discourage people from travelling to the afflicted countries.

At the summit, delegates were also being checked to see if they had been to the affected countries as a precautionary measure.
“We wanted to ensure that things are in order in terms of screening and so far we have not had any problems,” he said.

The minister said the region was still to set up a medical fund to bankroll the region’s response to Ebola, adding that currently, member sates were relying on individual budgets for any response measures.

“So far we are happy to say that there is till no singe Ebola case within the region and we hope it stays that way,” he said.
The region’s major focus at the moment was on preventing the disease from entering the region, Parirenyatwa said, adding “the issue is on encouraging the containment of the virus at source, to brush it at source, here its prevention, screening, prevention and educating our people on Ebola.”

At their meeting in Johannesburg two weeks ago, the Sadc health ministers agreed that all member states must screen passengers at every international airport to pick up people who have been to the affected countries.

Parirenyatwa said member states were at different stages of implementing the policy.
“We are now looking at discouraging our citizens from travelling there unless you have a real, good, compelling reason. We are discouraging people from going there until the epidemic is contained.”

The region, he said, will also need to come up with a policy on banning air travel to and from the afflicted countries.
Meanwhile, armed men claiming that “there’s no Ebola” in Liberia raided a quarantine centre for the deadly disease in Monrovia overnight, prompting at least 20 patients infected with the deadly virus to flee, a witness said yesterday.

“They broke down the door and looted the place. The patients have all gone,” said Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack and whose report was confirmed by residents and the head of Health Workers Association of Liberia, George Williams.

Williams said the unit housed 29 patients who were receiving preliminary treatment before being taken to hospital. It was unclear how many are now at large.

“They had all tested positive for Ebola,” he said, adding that nine had died, without elaborating.
Wesseh said she heard the assailants shouting that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf “is broke”, adding: “She wants money. There’s no Ebola” (in Liberia).

Wesseh said the mostly young men armed with clubs broke into the isolation unit set up in a highschool in a Monrovia suburb.
Nurses also fled the attack, Wesseh said. – Xinhua/AFP