Kenyan health activists: Ebola outbreak declared global health emergency

George Kebaso and Agencies @Morarak

Kenyan health activists want the government to heighten Ebola surveillance on borders and establish isolation unions in all the major hospitals in the country, following the declaration of the disease as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in DR Congo by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

AHF Country Programme director Simon Kinyanjui questioned the country’s preparedness in relation to the recent outbreak of Ebola in Western Uganda where a patient was reported dead.

“The latest case calls us to act fast owing to the fact that the disease has gone up very fast in the last three months. Congo is so close to Kenya and this calls for quick interventions. We are calling for urgent measures,” said Kinyanjui at an event in a Nairobi hotel on Thursday.

“In Kenya, both national and county governments should establish isolation units in the referral hospitals, equip them, increase bed capacity, and train healthcare personnel on the basic measures to take in case of an outbreak,” he added.

WHO declared the Ebola crisis in DRC a PHEIC, a move that may encourage wealthy donor countries to provide more cash.

But the agency stopped short of saying borders should be closed, saying the risk of the disease spreading outside the region was not high.

The outbreak in DRC has killed more than 1,600 people.This week, the first case was detected in Goma, home to more than a million.

The PHEIC emergency provision is the highest level of alarm the WHO can sound and has only been used four times previously.

Death toll

This includes the Ebola epidemic that devastated parts of West Africa from 2014 to 2016, and killed more than 11,000 people.

“It is time for the world to take notice,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday at which the emergency was declared. He said he accepted recommendations there should be no restrictions on travel or trade, and no entry screening of passengers at ports or airports outside the immediate region.

A panel of top WHO officials that met in Geneva expressed “disappointment about delays in funding which have constrained the response.”

A fresh UN funding appeal for several hundred million dollars to cover the ensuing six months is expected in the coming days. 

Reacting to the emergency declaration, Doctors Without Borders president Joanne Liu, called for “a change of gear” in the response to the outbreak. “We need to take stock of what is working and what is not working,” she said.   

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies welcomed the decision, voicing hope that the emergency call “will bring the international attention that this crisis deserves.”