Ebola: Kenya confirms second case. The patient is a close relative of the first victim

NAIROBI – On 14 October, the Kenyan authorities confirmed a second case of Ebola in the country, following the “patient zero” who died in a Nairobi hospital on 5 October.

The man is a 39-year-old who is a close relative of the victim from earlier this month; he was already in quarantine at the time of the test and when his result came back positive. Kenya has become the fourth country to report infected patients within its borders, following the original outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and France.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has recorded over 9,000 cases and nearly 4,400 deaths since the outbreak of the latest epidemic in mid-May, linked to the Bundibugyo variant and now spreading across seven provinces of the country. Uganda had recorded around 20 cases and two deaths, but declared the alert over and reported no cases in August. France had recorded a single case in a doctor returning from the DR Congo, but the virus does not appear to have spread since then.

The first and only Kenyan victim of the latest Ebola outbreak was a patient who had recently returned from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, travelling via Uganda by road and arriving in Nairobi on the day of his death. His entry into the country sparked concerns about loopholes in the border monitoring system, forcing William Ruto’s government to step up checks and contact tracing. The Kenyan Ministry of Health reports that it has documented 128 contacts with the first patient and has already traced 113 of them. Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected patients, causing diarrhoea, fever, nausea and, in the most severe cases, haemorrhages. The strain that spread during the latest outbreak is considered more dangerous because there are no specific vaccines available.