PS Muthoni says Kenya has no Ebola outbreak as surveillance intensifies
Principal Secretary for Health and Professional Standards Mary Muthoni has assured Kenyans that the country has not experienced an Ebola outbreak, saying health authorities have stepped up surveillance following confirmation of a single imported case. Muthoni said the government was monitoring all points of entry, including unofficial crossing points, as part of efforts to detect […]
Kenya had taken extensive measures to prepare for the possibility of an Ebola outbreak, including screening hundreds of thousands of travelers and training nearly 5,000 health workers. However, the disease still managed to cross borders and infect a Kenyan man who had been living in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for seven years.
He traveled through Beni in eastern DRC's North Kivu province to Kampala, Uganda's capital, and then flew directly to Nairobi, passing airport health screenings in both countries without being detected. By October 3, when he arrived at Nairobi Hospital, he was showing symptoms of the Bundibugyo virus, a form of Ebola, and died soon after.
Health officials are now working to identify anyone who may have been exposed. This case highlights how quickly an outbreak in the DRC can escalate into a larger regional problem, with the World Health Organization (WHO) assessing the risk to neighboring countries as high. As of Wednesday, WHO had recorded 8,728 confirmed Ebola cases and 4,205 deaths in the DRC, with cases now reported in seven provinces.
The rapid cross-border spread serves as a warning of the potential for more infections to cross borders while transmission remains intense in the DRC.
Written by urgent.news from Egypt Independent's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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