Blantyre District Health Office (DHO) has intensified Ebola awareness campaigns to communities amid reports that the disease has spread to Tanzania which is closer to Malawi.
Speaking on Tuesday in Senior Group Village Head (GVH) Chiwembe, Blantyre DHO Health Promotion Officer, Chrissy Banda, said the campaigns were one way of preparing communities against any possible Ebola outbreak
Banda said although there was no such a thing as [an outbreak] in the country, it was still necessary that Malawians be kept abreast of the cause and symptoms of the disease and how it gets transmitted from one person to another.
“In the health sector, we consider precaution measures seriously. Tanzania is not far from us and we needed to start spreading messages before we are affected. Actually in our campaigns, we are focusing much on how families can detect the disease, its signs and symptoms and how they can assist a person suspected to have been affected by this contagious disease,” said Banda.
The campaigns, which apart from rural communities, also target hot business centres such as markets and car selling points emphasising on the need for Malawians to restrict their movement, especially going outside the country.
“We don’t have Ebola yet in Malawi but we may get it with people’s continuous moving in and out of the country. What we are, therefore, stressing on is that let’s be careful with movements,” Banda said.
GVH Chiwembe commended the DHO for moving with speed and also for the messages, which he noted, would prepare his community to fight against any possible outbreak of the disease.
“What the DHO has done is very commendable. We don’t have to wait until we are hit for us to take actions, we need actions now,” Chiwembe said.
The Ebola outbreak was first detected and discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). At the onset, about 90 people in every 100 affected died of the disease.
However, with the coming in of various interventions including drugs, about 67 of every 100 people affected die from the disease.
The disease is said to be transmitted through any contact of a human fluid of an affected person.
