DAR ES SALAAM, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian health authorities on Thursday allayed fears of an Ebola outbreak, saying response strategies are in place.
"There should not be any panic because no cases have been reported in the rest of the EAC (East Africa of Community) bloc except Uganda," said Mohamed Kambi, chief medical officer in the Tanzanian Ministry of Health.
He told a news conference in the northern tourist city of Arusha that cross-border health professionals all over the EAC region are on the ground to monitor the situation.
The EAC groups Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Kambi said Tanzania will fully cooperate with her neighbors and the international community to ensure that the deadly hemorrhagic fever is contained in the affected countries and does not spill over to the country.
He said experts have been deployed to key areas along Tanzania's borders with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to enhance checks on incoming people.
On June 15, Tanzanian Minister for Health Ummy Mwalimu warned that the country was at high risk of an Ebola outbreak after the virus killed two people in neighboring Uganda.
Uganda's health ministry said last week that the second person infected with the Ebola virus has died after a family exposed to the disease quietly crossed the border from the DRC.
"Tanzania is at high risk of the Ebola virus outbreak and we are doing all we can to respond to the outbreak," said Mwalimu in an interview with Xinhua from Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said last week the Ebola outbreak in the DRC does not qualify as an international threat, despite the spread of the virus to neighboring Uganda.
Ebola spreads among humans through close contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected person.
The current outbreak in the DRC has killed more than 1,200 people.
Between 2014 and 2016, an Ebola epidemic that struck mainly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone left more than 11,300 people dead.
