SOUTH Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has issued an alert for typhoid fever to those returning from Zimbabwe.
The Health Department is already on high alert following an outbreak of typhoid cases up north across the Limpopo.
The institute has warned the disease could spread to neighbouring countries.
Symptoms of typhoid include fever, headache, abdominal pain and diarrhoea.
Head of the Outbreak Response Unit at the institute, Kerrigan McCarthy says health care practitioners and returning travellers need to be aware of the symptoms.
"The NICD has received reports of an increased number of cases of typhoid in Harare in Zimbabwe."
"We are very at risk of having acquired typhoid and we really want to release an awareness and alert to clinicians and also returning travellers to be aware of the symptoms."
Zimbabwe has reported at least nine deaths and more than 2,000 suspected cases of the bacterial infection nationwide.
A ministerial taskforce has been set up by the government to spearhead efforts to contain the outbreak.
Citizens blame erratic water supplies and poor sanitation for the spread of the water-borne disease.
The cases are mostly from densely populated areas in the capital Harare, which has been reeling under an acute shortage of piped water, and adding to the residents’ woes, rubbish is not being collected for days in the city.
Authorities announced that they would make clean water more accessible to citizens, and in the meantime, ban food vendors in Harare which officials say are worsening the outbreak.