Kenya on alert for Ebola
2007-12-06 16:30
Nairobi - Kenyan border officials have been warned to be on watch for Ugandans crossing in from a region hit by an Ebola outbreak, the health ministry said on Thursday.
Border guards have been asked to diligently screen Ugandans coming in and hospitals along porous border areas have been warned to keep watch for signs of the disease that has so far killed 22 out of 91 known cases in neighbouring Uganda.
"We are not closing the border but the border posts have been alerted," said Shahnaaz Sherif, senior deputy director of medical services at the Kenyan health ministry.
Two Ugandan health workers died on Wednesday from the disease which has no known cure and is fatal in most cases.
Some 224 people died in Uganda's last Ebola outbreak in 2000. Sherif said the infections did not spill over to Kenya then.
The epidemic broke out in August in the border areas with the Democratic Republic of Congo but results of the tests were only announced late last week and showed the strain of the disease as different from the existing four known Ebola strains.
- SAPA