By REBECCA MUSHOTA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia –

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) Africa office has established an incident management system at various country offices on the continent to deal with any possible cases of the Zika virus.

WHO Africa regional director, Matshidiso Moeti said that the organisation had established Zika virus incident management systems at country level.

Dr Moeti was speaking on Thursday during the briefing on Zika at the Ministerial Conference on Immunisation in Africa (MCIA) here.

“We are in contact with our country offices to ensure that surveillance of the disease is done well and prevent the virus from spreading on the continent.

“We have established incident management systems at country offices,” she said.

Dr Moeti said WHO had mobilised management teams to co-ordinate surveillance of the Zika virus.

She said this was important to ensure that the disease was prevented.

So far, Dr Moeti said, the continent had only recorded an imported case of Zika virus since its outbreak this year.

The case was imported from Latin America and was recorded in South Africa.

Dr Moeti said she was happy that the response by the South African health authorities was prompt and efficient, saying that the symptoms of the disease were not severe.

She said the WHO was emphasising on mosquito control in all communities in Africa seeing that the disease was spread by the insect.

WHO was strengthening community engagement in ensuring that mosquitoes were prevented from biting citizens.

United States Centre for Disease Control (CDC) director Tom Frieden said it was surprising that the Zika virus was also sexually transmitted.

Dr Frieden said experts did not know a lot on the virus and were learning on how best it could be controlled.