Five questions about quarantine center in Kenya Plans to open a US Ebola quarantine center in Kenya have been postponed by three weeks by a judge. Two people were killed during a demonstration against its arrival on Monday evening. “Kenya is a sovereign republic.”
If it is up to Kenyan President William Ruto, it will simply happen: a quarantine center for Americans exposed to the Ebola virus. The United States would like to open such a facility at a Kenyan air base in the center of the country.
But in the rest of Kenya there is growing resistance to the arrival of the center. Critics accuse Ruto of opening the door to a “colonial” project. Kenya’s High Court on Tuesday extended a lower court’s ruling for three weeks to suspend the opening of the centre.
The relatively rare Bundibugyo variant of Ebola is responsible for an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. No cases of the virus have been reported in Kenya. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization WHO reported a sharp drop in the number of suspected infections by the Ebola virus, from more than nine hundred to 330.
What kind of center is this exactly? What will happen next in the fight against Ebola? And three more questions.
1Why does the US want a center in Kenya?
On The United States closed on May 18 the borders for non-Americans who had recently visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda or South Sudan. This measure would initially be in effect for thirty days, with a chance of extension.
The American government now wants to go a step further and prefer not to host American citizens who have been exposed to the Ebola virus in their own country. Instead, they want to set up a facility north of Nairobi where American patients would be monitored and treated.
2What exactly is this facility?
The Kenyan air base in Laikipia would make room for the facility, with space for fifty beds. The staff would include American doctors who were involved in the response to the largest Ebola outbreak to date, in 2014. The team would be trained in the US and then deployed to provide care in Kenya.
Last Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with President Ruto about the collaboration between the US and Kenya, according to a US government press release. The Americans would allocate 13.5 million dollars (12 million euros) for ‘Ebola preparedness’. In addition, 112 million dollars (about 96 million euros) in bilateral aid would be provided ‘for the regional response’. No information was given about the facility.
The US is also looking at options for Americans to be treated in Europe. American Ebola patients have already been treated in a Berlin and Prague hospital. Bringing American patients back to the US is excludedthus The New York Times. The World Health Organization, among others, opposes the US travel restrictions.
In the US, there are several modern specialized facilities that can accommodate Ebola patients, such as the Nebraska Quarantine Unit. They are now staying there for observation eighteen crew members of the Dutch cruise ship Hondius where the hantavirus broke out.
3How is the Kenyan government responding?
In a first response Monday evening defended President Ruto the decision to grant US President Donald Trump’s request because it “involved a collaboration with friends who have been working with Kenya for thirty to forty years.”
On the same day, hundreds of demonstrators demonstrated at the air base where the center was to be located. Two people were killed during the demonstration after police opened fire on them, Reuters news agency said, citing a protest organizer and “a security source.”
Critics criticize the arrival of the center, while healthcare in Kenya is said to be in poor shape due to a lack of funding and staff shortages and the Ebola virus has not yet emerged in Kenya. “You cannot deal with a national health crisis by importing an international one,” says the Kenyan Union of Doctors, Pharmacists and Dentists (KMPDU). in a statement. “Kenya is a sovereign republic, not a geopolitical isolation division.”
The KMPDU also finds it objectionable that American doctors and nurses will work in the center, instead of Kenyan health care workers. “We will not tolerate an apartheid model of healthcare on Kenyan soil,” the union warned. In a column in the Kenyan newspaper TheStandard economist Xn Iraqi writes that the plan for the Ebola center “stinks of neocolonialism.”
4What exactly was the Kenyan judge’s ruling?
The court ruled in a case brought by a Kenyan NGO, which pointed out, among other things, that public health would be endangered by the arrival of the center. The court followed the previous ruling and decided that foreign (suspected) Ebola patients are not allowed to enter Kenya, including American ones.
In addition, the court ordered the Kenyan Minister of Health to make public details of the agreements with the US, as well as how it assessed the health risks.
5How is the Ebola epidemic developing in Congo?
In Congo and Uganda, there have been a total of 49 confirmed deaths caused by the Bundibugyo variant of the virus, according to the World Health Organization WHO. In Congo, 321 Ebola cases have been confirmed, with 116 more suspected infections. This is a sharp drop from previous figures, due to the exclusion of Ebola from hundreds of other suspected infections. Nine more infections have been confirmed in Uganda. Some positive signals also emerged: the WHO reported that six Ebola patients in Congo had been recovered.
There is currently no vaccine or specific treatment for this virus, although work is underway.
Source: NRC