Please follow us on Truth Social, X, YouTube, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, Gab, Instagram
Ebola has crossed another border. Kenya’s health ministry has just confirmed that a man who flew into Nairobi from Congo last weekend was carrying the Bundibugyo strain of the virus. He died late Monday night Nairobi time, hours before the government went public with the news.
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale told a press conference, according to Kenyans, that the patient was a Kenyan citizen. The man had lived and worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo for seven years. He fell ill a month ago while in the DR Congo and received treatment from various hospitals there before he traveled to Uganda by road. From Kampala he flew into Kenya on Jambojet flight carrying 23 passengers and four crew, arriving at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 1:10pm on Saturday, October 3.
He passed through all the port health procedures, cleared immigration and then was driven to Nairobi Hospital by family and friends where he was placed in isolation. He presented with symptoms of severe fever, chills, fatigue, muscle pain, painful swallowing and bleeding under the skin. Samples tested at the National Virology Reference Laboratory and at KEMRI both came back positive for Ebola. The patient died at 11:30pm on Monday, October 5.
Contacts that have been identified so far include family members of the victim and health workers who treated him when he walked into the hospital with symptoms of the disease. In addition to family members and health workers, the ministry is also tracking 23 other passengers and 4 crew members who traveled on Jambojet flight from Kampala to Nairobi. Duale said nearly 5,000 health workers across the country have been trained to deal with cases of Ebola in the event of an outbreak.
According to the Reuters news agency, the current Ebola outbreak, declared in mid-May but believed to have started months earlier, is the biggest ever to hit the Democratic Republic of Congo. The outbreak has proven resistant to containment with over 8,000 cases recorded and more than 4,000 deaths. The outbreak earlier spread to Uganda, which reported 20 cases and two deaths before the World Health Organization declared it free of the disease in August.
Officials stress this is an imported case with no evidence of local transmission and as the contact tracing unfolds, it will show whether anyone was exposed during the three days the patient spent in Nairobi before he died.
