The Malawi Government, through the Ministry of Health, has put up measures to prevent the spread of the Marburg virus disease in the country. The Marburg disease was recently recorded in Tanzania.
Speaking yesterday, during a media orientation on public health threats and the country’s preparedness in responding to emerging health threats, the Ministry of Health Community and Promotive Health Services deputy director responsible for health promotions Kondwani Mamba assured the country that, the Ministry can manage the Marburg virus disease in the event of an outbreak in the country.
” As a Ministry, we have a well-coordinated human resource from national level to village level, which enables the Ministry to do intensive community surveillance, and such capacity would enable us to identify an emerging threat as soon as possible,” he explained.
According to Mamba, the country has a well-established system for managing outbreaks of pandemics of similar nature, for example, COVID-19.
“We have a robust surveillance system that we normally conduct, even at the grassroots level, to communities that we have in the country. We also have a very good diagnostic capacity, we have our lab that can manage to investigate and detect, in case samples come from different facilities for analysis,” said Mamba.
Mamba also disclosed that the government has trained health workers, including in border areas,s, about the disease to detect any possible outbreak.
He then asked the media to help sensitise the public about Marburg virus disease and other public health threats so that people know the signs and can present themselves to hospitals when they experience signs.
The Marburg Virus, a highly infectious and often fatal disease, is similar to Ebola and is transmitted to humans from fruit bats and monkeys.
