Ministry to monitor Ebola during Youth Games

By The Standard and Newsday | Oct. 27, 2014

THE African Union Sports Council Region V Under-20 Youth Games secretary-general Mvuzo Mbebe has said Bulawayo should not worry about the Ebola outbreak as the Health and Child Welfare ministry has put in place measures to guard against the deadly virus.

Mbebe said this during a press conference after conducting the draw for the games at a local hotel on Friday night.

The Ebola virus, an infectious and generally fatal disease marked by fever and severe internal bleedings spread through contact with infected body fluids, has ravaged West African countries and continues to spread to other areas. To date 4 922 people have died out of 10 141 known cases.

“There is a team from the Heath ministry that has come up with a plan to monitor Ebola and all other communicable diseases,” he said.

“There are no traces of the disease in Southern Africa. We have asked the confederations to monitor the movement of their athletes with the last 21 days before they come to Bulawayo.”

Mbebe said the African Union had no restrictions on travelling and until such restrictions were put in place, they were comfortable with the regulations put in place by the AU and the World Health Organisation.

Bulawayo is expecting about 1 500 athletes and officials from Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, South Africa, Seychelles, Zambia and hosts Zimbabwe.

Mbebe reiterated that Zimbabwe was ready to host the games and that the sports confederations that had toured the games venues were confident that the city would have completed renovations by the November 15.