Kenya
Fears growing over Ebola in Kenya

Misanet.com / IPS, 24 November - Fears are growing over the spread of the Ebola virus into Kenya, following the forceful screening and quarantine of 11 people who had travelled to Uganda to attend funerals of victims.

Health officials have intensified their screening efforts at common border points with Uganda, where at least 150 people have died since the disease broke out in October this year.

No cases of Ebola have been recorded in Kenya so far, but authorities are taking no chances. Government officials say they are working closely with their Ugandan counterparts to contain the spread of the deadly virus in the East African countries. Health advisories have been issued in the local media, for residents to avoid all close contact with infected persons.

Those quarantined in a hospital in Busia, a town on the common border, are members of three families who had travelled from western Kenya to attend funeral ceremony of an Ebola victim in Uganda.

Health services minister, Amukowa Anagwe, said that members of the family had crossed into and from Uganda through unnamed border points. "Within 24 hours of receiving the information, the ministry in conjunction with the provincial administration and the police managed to trace the families and to quarantine them at their homes," Anagwe said here.

Anagwe urged Kenyans to avoid attending funerals of Ebola victims and those living along the border with Uganda to notify their local administration of all visitors coming in and out of the country.

Last week police arrested an Ebola "suspect" who had gone into hiding after attending the burial of a relative who had died from Ebola in Uganda. Health officials in Busia, a town on the border with Uganda said the "suspect" declined to confess whether the relative has succumbed to Ebola, and instead insisted that the relative had already been buried in Gulu. The "suspect" had, however, not shown any signs of the disease.

Top government officials and police also have been meeting with the management of a tourist hotel in Nairobi, over guests in the hotel believed to have come from Ebola hit district of Gulu, in northern Uganda.

Meanwhile, Ugandan health officials are struggling to contain the disease, by tracking down individuals who have travelled in and of the quarantined districts to attend burials of victims. Several cases have been reported in the southern Ugandan towns of Masindi and Mbarara since the initial cases of Ebola outbreak in the northern districts of Gulu and Kitgum were reported.

The migration of the Ebola virus, from the conflict region in the north to the agricultural potential region of Mbarara, is feared could cause an economic set back for the East African country. Ebola is one of the deadliest haemorrhagic fevers, caused by a virus, and spread through body contact with ill persons. The virus is transmitted through contact with virus-infected blood and body fluids including semen.

Symptoms include high fever, muscle pains, vomiting, diarrhoea, and internal bleeding. The disease kills up to 70 percent of patients. A total of 207 patients are however reported to have recovered from the illness. Experts say that the virus is, unlike HIV, which causes AIDS which has devastated the region over the last decade, not self sustaining and is much easier to control, because it kills its victims faster than it can spread.

Kenyan authorities say that up to 20,000 people have been screened on the main border points.

Ebola was first reported in 1976 in the former Zaire. Since then, Ebola outbreaks have occurred in parts of central Africa, including Congo and Gabon, while spreading Eastwards to southern Sudan and lately Uganda.

The outbreak that emerged in Kikwit, in the former Zaire in 1996 where it killed 300 people, 70 percent of those infected. Reports from Uganda say death rates have lowered, with up to 60 percent of those infected recovering. 

Sources: By Judith Achieng' (IPS) 

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