With a new Ebola outbreak across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale came to Jeff Koinange Live to answer the questions worrying Kenyans, and some tougher ones too.
Jeff began with reports that an Ebola treatment facility being set up at Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki was only for Americans. Duale called that misinformation. The Laikipia facility, he said, is one of 23 quarantine, isolation and treatment centres planned across 25 high-risk counties, and it will serve Kenya Defence Forces personnel and other security officers as well as US nationals.
He explained that this is the 17th Ebola outbreak and that this strain, the Bundibugyo variant, has no vaccine. Both the WHO and Africa CDC have declared it an international public health emergency. Thousands of Kenyans do business in the DRC and some 450 Kenyan soldiers serve in the UN mission there, so the risk is real. As of 3 June, he said, there was no Ebola case in Kenya: 22 suspected cases and contacts had all tested negative, more than 72,000 travellers had been screened, and 26 entry points were being watched.
Jeff pressed him on a court order to stop construction of the Laikipia facility. Duale declined to discuss the merits of a case before the courts, but pointed to the powers the Public Health Act gives the health minister during an epidemic.
On funding, Duale credited the United States, which he said has spent about $8 billion in Kenya's health sector over 23 years and contributed KSh 1.7 billion to the Ebola response. "I have come here to tell the people the truth," he said, "not fake news, not propaganda." He said Kenya's labs, surveillance and contact-tracing systems had all been scaled up.
Continue with Part 3 on Citizen TV.
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