South Sudan's Minister of Health Yolanda Awel Deng speaking to Eye Radio on precautionary measures against Ebola Virus Disease on Wednesday 28th Sept2022. Credit: Charles Wote/Eye Radio

The Minister of Health has called on the public, especially travelers to embrace safety measures by regularly washing hands and other sanitary measures to avoid contracting the Ebola virus.

Over the weekend, the health Minister visited the border town of Nimule to assess the points of entry as precautionary measures against the Ebola virus Disease.

On Saturday, the Ministry also dispatched a technical team of 15 health workers to areas bordering Uganda and DR Congo to monitor and screen travelers amid the new Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

Health authorities in neighboring Uganda have so far announced over 30 confirmed cases and Ebola-related deaths.

Speaking exclusively to Eye Radio yesterday, Minister Yolanda Awel Deng says though South Sudan has not registered any case of Ebola Virus Disease, the public need to adhere to preventive measures.

This include, frequent hand washing and reporting any suspected sudden onset of fever, vomiting, sweating, and bleeding to the nearby health facility.

“When you come into the country from neighboring Uganda and from the neighboring towns, we need to follow the protocol, the hand washing protocol,” said Yolanda.

“You need to avoid keeping somebody who is showing the signs and most of these signs are actually common like the sudden onset of fever, the mussels ache, vomiting, heavily sweating and the last one among those is Diarrhea and the blood coming from the opening of your body.”

Minister Yolanda however went on to say they have deployed some health personnel on some routes that are used by some people to enter the country illegally.

“When I did an assessment, we decided that we are not going to shut down that river transportation, we are going to keep it open but we are going to run-up screening,”

“Right now, my team is on the ground to put the tent in that area, the hand washing area, the screening area, the holding area, and also to be able to put an ambulance there,

“In case somebody come using the river, we just screen them and make sure that we facilitate them,

“We have got a lot of panya-routes which is like illegal crossing points along the area but we are working hand in hand with the border police which is the Ministry of Interior and IGP to make sure that the law is quite well enforced in that area,

“We are not preventing people from coming but we want to make sure that when you are coming into the country, you are not passing any type of disease around.”