Nairobi — Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has announced a raft of emergency preparedness measures aimed at shielding Kenya from a potential Ebola outbreak, including the establishment of temporary holding centers at border entry points bordering Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Speaking during Eid al-Adha celebrations, Duale said the government had heightened surveillance across all major border crossings, deploying screening personnel and verification teams to monitor travellers entering the country from neighbouring states considered at risk.
He revealed that mobile laboratories have already been activated and are operating at key frontier posts along the Kenya-Uganda and Kenya-South Sudan borders to support rapid testing and response efforts.
“Under serious screening and verification, we are also putting up a holding area within the border in the event that we get a case. So the country is fully, fully prepared for this border,” said Duale.
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According to the Health CS, Kenya’s preparedness strategy also includes enhanced laboratory capacity, with three national testing facilities now operating continuously to process Ebola samples throughout the week.
He said the laboratories are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure rapid detection, testing and isolation of any suspected infections before wider transmission can occur.
In addition to border monitoring and laboratory surveillance, Duale disclosed that the government has rolled out an aggressive contact-tracing and travel-monitoring programme targeting individuals who may have recently travelled to Ebola-affected regions.
The ministry, he said, is actively identifying, tracing and testing people believed to have visited high-risk areas in the past month as part of broader containment efforts.
“Thirdly, we are doing a lot of traceability. Anybody we feel who has been to that region in the last one month, we are testing them and making sure that we protect our country,” he said.
Duale also appealed to members of the public to remain vigilant and cooperate with health authorities by reporting suspected illnesses, particularly among relatives or acquaintances returning from Uganda or the DRC.
He urged families not to ignore warning signs and to seek immediate medical attention for anyone who recently travelled to affected countries and develops symptoms associated with illness.
“Any of your relatives who feel sick and recently visited Uganda or DRC, please go to the nearest medical facility so our health workers can check,” Duale urged.
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The latest measures come as Kenya strengthens its public health response against cross-border disease threats, with authorities seeking to prevent any possible importation of Ebola cases from the region.
Canada has announced a temporary 90-day entry ban on residents from DR Congo and neighbouring Uganda and South Sudan. The Bahamas also imposed strict rules meaning foreign nationals from those countries face quarantine or isolation measures.
Last week the US banned non-citizens who had travelled to the three places from entering.
The Congolese health authorities say around 1,000 people are currently showing symptoms consistent with Ebola.
The DR Congo country director for the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has told the BBC it will take several weeks to get proper infrastructure in place to contain the outbreak.
This outbreak is a rare species of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo, for which there are no vaccines or medicines.
DR Congo health authorities have been struggling to confirm cases of the 220 deaths, only 17 people so far have been confirmed by lab tests as having died from the disease.
Medics are also facing a race against time to trace 3,600 people identified as contacts of the infected group.
Some 2,000 tests have been distributed, with a further 4,000 due to be sent out. Experimental treatments – including an antibody developed in the US – could also be introduced soon.
