Kenya Health Minister Assures Court of Ebola Facility Construction Halt

Kenya's Health Minister Aden Duale assured a Kenyan court on Tuesday that he had ordered an immediate halt to the construction of a US-backed Ebola quarantine facility at an air base.

Duale had been found in contempt of court on Monday for failing to observe previous orders to suspend the construction pending an evaluation by the judiciary.

The tented facility in the central town of Nanyuki was supposed to serve as a treatment center for US nationals should any contract Ebola amid the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The plans to build it, first announced in May, had led to sometimes violent protests, with a total of three people being killed in the vicinity.

What else do we know about the paused plans?

Justice Patricia Nyaundi Mande disccharged Duale with no further punishment after receiving the assurance from the minister, but warned him against further disobedience.

"I have directed the immediate and complete cessation of any intended construction, site preparation, or related activities concerning the Laikipia Air Base facility pending the hearing and determination of the substantive petition or until further orders of this court," Duale said during Tuesday's sentencing hearing.

The facility was being constructed at the Laikipia Air Base, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the capital, Nairobi, with some 50 isolation beds. US medical staff were expected to manage it.

The plans prompted considerable domestic backlash and protests. Kenya has never recorded a case of Ebola and there was public concern about bringing patients onto its territory — even directly airlifting them to a secure medical facility.

Rights groups also successfully petitioned the court, saying the facility was being constructed secretly and without consultations. The government initially disregarded orders to pause the construction pending checks.

Flight tracking data, satellite imagery and US officials speaking on condition of anonymity had pointed to continued preparations at the site despite the initial court order.

The sole US citizen to have contracted Ebola so far in the current outbreak — a doctor working as a medical missionary in the heart of the outbreak in eastern DRC — was flown into Germany for treatment at a specialist facility in Berlin.

Kenya does not border Congo but it is situated directly to the east of Uganda, which is on the border to the epicenter in Ituri province in eastern DRC.

WHO says current outbreak has highest first-month caseload on record

Meanwhile, a senior World Health Organization official told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday that the outbreak in the DRC had the highest number of confirmed cases in its first month of any Ebola outbreak in Africa.

The WHO formally confirmed the outbreak on May 15, but experts believe it was likely circulating for weeks or months prior to that.

"The response needs to expand to keep pace with the expanding outbreak — this is beginning to happen," the WHO's Abdirahman Mahamud said after returning from a visit last week to the Bunia treatment center in the outbreak's epicenter.

Officials have confirmed more than 1,000 cases and 267 deaths from the current outbreak of the comparatively rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus.

Cases have now also been confirmed in at least three of war torn eastern Congo's crowded displacement camps.

The International Organization for Migration's Abdoulaye Wone said at the same Geneva briefing on Tuesday that 25 cases had been confirmed at the camps, including 14 deaths.

There have been more than 20 outbreaks across Africa since the 1970s, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most deadly pair were in West Africa, in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, killing 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016 and another in Congo starting in 2018 with 2,229 recorded deaths.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn