Kenya has reported its first-ever Ebola death, the health minister announced on Tuesday, after a Kenyan man who had been living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) died after returning to the country.
In mid-May, the DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak, an extremely deadly disease that has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.
While Kenya has previously never reported a case, neighbouring Uganda recorded 20 Ebola cases – almost all people who had travelled from the DRC – and two deaths, before being declared Ebola-free in August.
The Kenyan citizen, who has not been named, fell ill about a month ago and had been treated in the DRC, Aden Duale, the Kenyan health minister, told reporters, before travelling overland to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and then flying to Nairobi on 3 October.
Duale said the man was suffering “fever, chills, intense fatigue, weakness, muscle pain, painful swallowing, sore throat and bleeding under the skin at the injection sites”.
He said the man was subsequently screened and confirmed positive for the virus, saying that he “regrettably passed on last night at around 1130” in the evening (2030 GMT).
Duale said officials had listed 28 contacts of the deceased, including family members and healthcare workers, but that so far “only one test has turned positive and is the one that we have just discussed”.
However, he added that authorities were pursuing a further 23 passengers and four crew members who were on the same flight with the man and that “arrangements” for quarantine for those at risk had been prepared. “I wish to assure the public not to panic, as all systems are in place to mitigate the spread of the disease,” he said.
Duale said that arrangements for a “safe and dignified burial” of the man were planned for later in the day in line with public health standards. He did not disclose further details.
As of 2 October, the World Health Organization had recorded 4,082 deaths out of 8,463 cases since the emergence in the DRC of the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which there is still neither a vaccine nor a specific treatment.
After starting in the north-eastern Ituri province, the current outbreak has spread to seven provinces in the north and east.
The virus has hit unstable regions in the vast central African country where armed clashes and violence, alongside a critical lack of resources, have hindered the health response.
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières warned on Monday of an “alarming surge” in cases in eastern North Kivu province, which borders Uganda.
Kenyans reacted furiously to government plans earlier this year for the creation of an Ebola facility at Laikipia airbase, about 125 miles from Nairobi.
