MBOMBELA – A resident of Ghana who feared he may have contracted the dreaded Ebola virus when visiting his home country recently, was sent home with a letter from Rob Ferreira Hospital, stating that they could not do a screening test for the disease. This despite the fact that the minister of health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, had announced that it was one of the designated hospitals to deal with Ebola cases.
The resident (40), who requested to stay anonymous, has been living and working in South Africa for six years. He went back to Ghana in August to visit his family.
On his return later that month, he experienced flu-like symptoms and feared that he might have contracted Ebola. He went to Rob Ferreira Hospital on August 25 to be tested and treated.
He was sent home with a letter stating that “unfortunately there is no screening test we can do for Ebola. It is also currently not an epidemic in Ghana”. Fortunately, he has since recovered.
Lowvelder enquired about this from the provincial Department of Health spokesman, Mr Dumisani Malamule. He only responded by saying he was not allowed to comment on Ebola-related matters and the newspaper should send its questions to the national department.
The paper consequently forwarded its questions to national spokesman Mr Joe Maila, who also failed to answer at the time of going to print.
On September 3, Dr WG James of the DA enquired from Motsoaledi in parliament if he could confirm if all of the hospitals designated by him to treat Ebola virus disease (EVD) patients were in a state of readiness with a standard protocol based on World Health Organisation medical norms to symptomatically recognise, diagnose, test, clinically isolate, treat and, if there are fatalities, deal with the bodies of EVD-infected persons. Motsoaledi said yes.
“All the designated hospitals have received guidelines on viral haemorrhagic fever and Ebola virus disease, dealing with all aspects of the diagnosis, isolation, treatment and even management of possible fatalities that may occur due to Ebola virus disease, and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.
“Each of these hospitals have been supplied with a full complement of personal protective equipment (PPE) that consists of jump suits, scrub suist, N95 masks, shoe covers, double gloves, and goggles.”
He continued by saying that, within the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the state of readiness also very much revolves around the expertise we have in South Africa. “All the laboratory diagnosis of Ebola within SADC, will only be performed at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in South Africa.
