Ebola outbreak: Kenya at high risk, warns WHO

Correspondent | Wednesday August 13, 2014 14:53

 

Kenya was vulnerable because it was a major transport hub, with many flights from West Africa, a WHO official said.

This is the most serious warning to date by the WHO that Ebola could spread to East Africa.

Health experts are battling to contain the outbreak in West Africa, where it has killed more than 1,000 people.

Canada said it would donate up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to help fight the outbreak.

Ebola was first reported in Guinea in February, before spreading to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous state, is the latest to be affected, reporting a third Ebola-related death on Tuesday.

The WHO's country director for Kenya, Custodia Mandlhate, said the East African state was 'classified in group two; at high risk of transmission'.

Health checks at the main airport in the capital, Nairobi, have been stepped up in recent weeks.

The government said it would not ban flights from the four countries hit by Ebola.

'We do not recommend ban of flights because of porous borders,' health cabinet secretary James Macharia said.

Kenya receives more than 70 flights a week from West Africa.

The West African regional body, Ecowas, said one of its officials, Jatto Asihu Abdulqudir, had died of Ebola in Nigeria.

The 36-year-old had been in contact with Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian government employee who was the first to be killed by the virus in Nigeria on 25 July, Ecowas said in a statement.

Mr Sawyer had flown in from Liberia, when he was diagnosed with Ebola after collapsing at the airport in Lagos, the biggest city in sub-Saharan Africa.

(BBC)