THE government has ordered authorities at the country’s borders to tighten the screening of visitors for Ebola amid fears that the process is lax. FELUNA NLEYA STAFF REPORTER
Speaking during a tour of Beitbridge border post yesterday, Health and Child Care minister David Parirenyatwa urged the port health officials to revise the screening set-up to detect the Ebola virus.
He said cross-border travellers should be screened before they crossed to the Zimbabwean side.
“We want to rearrange our surveillance and screening. We have been doing it from inside, but we need to have it outside now,” Parirenyatwa said.
Parirenyatwa said truck drivers were now required to produce a certificate of screening for them to be allowed to cross the country’s borders. The deadly disease has killed over 3 000 people in West African countries since the first case was reported in March.
Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria have borne the brunt of the disease.
Fears that it could spread down south were heightened after several people were killed by the disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Meanwhile, the government yesterday launched the human papiloma virus (HPV) vaccine for prevention of cervical cancer among girls under the age of 10 years.
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“We recognised that cervical cancer is the leading cancer in Zimbabwe,” Parirenyatwa said at the launch in Beitbridge.
“The major cause is HPV and they get that virus through sexual contact with men. We want to break that chain and that is through prevention which is by vaccination.”
He said the pilot vaccination programme was targeted at over 4000 girls aged 10 years and below.
“We will start off with a demo programme, then we have a nationwide rollout in 2016,” Parirenyatwa said.
Primary and Secondary Education deputy minister Paul Mavima said his ministry supported the programme.
