Ghana on alert for Ebola outbreak - MoH
The Ministry of Health has asked all medical facilities to be on the alert for Ebola following the outbreak of the disease in DR Congo.
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According the Head of Public Relations at the Ministry of Health, Mr Robert Cudjoe, measures have been instituted to help prevent the virus from entering Ghana and that all entry points have been notified to ensure that people were screened before they were allowed to enter the country.
In a radio interview on Accra based, Peace FM, Mr Cudjoe said officers at the entry points have been advised to look out for symptoms in people who use the boarders.
”If we need to quarantine them, then it must be done as early as possible to prevent an outbreak which we are praying against’ he said.
A total of 27 cases of the disease has since been recorded in DR Congo with three deaths in less than a week.
But, Mr Cudjoe assured that through lessons learnt from the past outbreak, the Ghana government was on top of issues to curtail the situation should the need be.
He also called on all stakeholders to get on board to ensure that the nation did not suffer any outbreak of the disease.
Ebola
In December 2013, after a two-year-old boy died from Ebola in a rural village in Guinea, the virus spread across three West African countries, reaching Nigeria, Spain, the US and the UK, claiming more than 11,000 lives.
The outbreak was catastrophic, leaving whole communities in ruins, thousands of children orphans and millions facing starvation
The Ebola virus, also known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a disease that occurs in humans and primates.
The virus is part of the Filoviridae family, which also includes Marburg virus.
To date, scientists have identified five strains of Ebola – four of which are known to cause disease in humans.
The natural reservoir – or host of the virus – is thought to be the fruit bat.
Non-human primates are a secondary host, and like humans develop fatal symptoms, so are unlikely to be the reservoir.
In spite of the epidemic that swept West Africa from 2013 to 2015, scientists class Ebola as a virus that has a relatively low infection rate.
During that, the most recent and most widespread outbreak, one Ebola patient would typically pass the disease on to another two people.
That is compared with a disease like measles where one case can often lead to 18 new infections
