By Hanning Mbabazi
Juba: South Sudan Government on Wednesday 3 July stepped up surveillance along its southern border after an Ebola case was detected in the North East of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A health official in Juba told the press, that the case of the deadly virus was confirmed in Ariwara, Northeastern Ituri province, just 70 kilometers from the frontier with Yei River State in South Sudan.
The deadliest Ebola outbreak is known to have come closer to South Sudan months after a major outbreak struck Congo in August 2018 and so far more than 1,500 lives have been reported dead.
Dr. Pinyi Nyimol, the director general of South Sudan’s Disease Control and Emergency Response Centre (DCERC), said a team of reinforcements had been sent to the region to bolster surveillance after the case was confirmed.
“We are very worried because it is coming nearer, and people are on the move, so contact (with Ebola) could cross to South Sudan,” he told the press.
South Sudan has already declared a state of high alert and vaccinated health workers.
He added “There are screening centers at border crossings in high-risk areas and an Ebola treatment unit and a laboratory in the capital Juba.”
But the world’s youngest country is considered particularly vulnerable to the notorious virus, because years of ruinous civil war have left its health system in tatters.
The border with the Democratic Republic of Congo has many unofficial crossing points, posing challenges for detection. Fighting in and around Yei River State since September has also driven nearly 20,000 civilians into DR Congo and Uganda, both countries that have detected Ebola.
Two people died in Uganda in June after a family returned from eastern Congo where they had buried an Ebola-stricken relative. Ebola spreads among humans through close contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected person, or objects contaminated by such fluids.
