MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina claims in can detect the ebola virus in patients in less than 24 hours

Deputy Health minister Jaime Lazovski revealed that at the moment officials have registered five false alarm cases in different parts of the country.

Argentina has developed a molecular biological method to detect the presence of the Ebola virus in a patient in less than 24 hours, the Argentine health ministry has announced.

The method was developed by the Malbran Institute with the help of genetic material of the virus sent from a reference center of the World Health Organization (WHO) and which is the only kind that exists in Latin America.

The center managed to design a “primer” that allows the genome of the Ebola virus to multiply if it is found in a blood sample or other bodily fluids, and thus confirm or discard a case.

Argentine Health Minister Juan Manzur said Thursday that “Argentina is the first Latin American country which has a diagnosis method for Ebola” and said that the technique developed was validated by a WHO reference center.

He also stressed that the surveillance to detect possible cases in the country had worked fine so far.

Health department deputy minister Jaime Lazovski said that at the moment officials have registered five case of false alarms in different parts of the country.

The health ministry has announced that it will strengthen the health system so as to be prepared for possible Ebola cases, after those detected in the United States and Spain, and the suspected case in Brazil.

The ministry will focus on the training of the staff, the purchase of equipment for patient isolation and the development of a protocol for handling Ebola cases.

Until now, only three reference hospitals in the entire country were prepared to treat this illness.

However, after the cases in Spain and the United States, the ministry has decided that it is necessary to boost the health system of Argentina to act efficiently.