Kenya Detects Eighth Ebola Case

Kenyan authorities have detected an eighth case of Ebola in the country, a health ministry official said.

The latest case was a 49-year-old man with symptoms including fever, high temperature, headaches, and muscle pain, said health ministry director Patrick Amoth said in an interview with Citizen TV late Sunday.

“Today we tested 38 persons, one turned positive,” he said, adding that the man had been in quarantine since October 9.

The man was a support staff at a health facility, handling things like laundry, Amoth said, and was likely exposed to the virus in the room of the first Kenyan patient.

Kenya reported its first Ebola case on October 6 — a businessman in his forties who had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where there has been a major outbreak since May.

He travelled by car and plane via Uganda to Kenya, where he died on October 5.

The other seven cases in Kenya have been relatives of the first patient or health workers who treated him, and Amoth said they were in a stable condition.

Neighboring Uganda has recorded 20 cases, almost all imported from DRC, and two deaths, before declaring the end of the outbreak within its borders in August.

Kenyan health authorities reported last week that they had identified 130 contacts, 128 of whom have been traced and are in quarantine.

In the DRC, the epidemic has surpassed 9,000 cases, with 4,381 deaths, according to Congolese health authorities.

AFP