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Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has called for mining houses to invest in centres for disease control to help fight Tuberculosis and Ebola in African regions where they mine.

The Minister said this when participating in a panel discussion at the Investing in Africa Mining Indaba at the Cape Town Convention Centre in Cape Town, on Monday.

“I propose that mining houses, because they have got the financial muscle, assist us in strengthening the health systems … where they mine. We need an African centre for disease control and believe me if we had it, it would not have taken so long for us to detect that there is Ebola.”

“So where do the mining houses come in? To help us establish them and train people, train the human resources,” he said.

The Ebola disease has, ever since it broke out, killed thousands of people in West African countries.

The Ebola outbreak led to the African Union setting up a fund to fight the disease through vaccine research and the dispatching of health personnel to the affected regions.