Health officials screen a traveller for Ebola at the Tanzania-Kenya Namanga border in September. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
Authorities in Alabama chose to test only one person from a dozen likely cases — a patient who had been to Kenya.
The first person subjected to Ebola protocols at New York’s Kennedy airport was a man travelling from Nairobi.
A school in the UK is under pressure to keep two teachers visiting Kenya away from students for three weeks.
Kenya continues to be linked to rising panic over Ebola in the United States and elsewhere despite no cases of the disease being reported in East Africa.
Fears in the West have been rising along with the death toll in the deadly epidemic in West Africa, which has so far claimed an estimated 4,447 lives.
Despite efforts by tourism players in Kenya to point out how far away countries like Kenya are from the heart of the crisis, fears persist.
Authorities in Alabama who screened a dozen likely cases say they chose to test only one person who “met the criteria” — a patient who had been to Kenya. They said the patient had spent time in the bush and may have been exposed to bats. The test, however, proved negative. It was malaria.
Another patient who had been in contact with family members that had travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was not tested after not meeting the criteria set out by the Centers for Disease Control.
About 70 people have died in the DRC in an unrelated Ebola outbreak.
The first person subjected to Ebola protocols when New York’s Kennedy airport began enhanced screening last Saturday was a man travelling from Nairobi.
In Chesire, England, a school in a railway town called Crewe is under pressure from parents to keep two teachers visiting Kenya away from students for three weeks after they return. According to the Crewe Chronicle, more than 60 parents are threatening to withdraw their children from The Berkeley Primary School over what they see as an “unnecessary risk”.
A school in Louisville, Kentucky seeking to avoid just such a problem has had to write to parents reassuring them about a trip by one of their teachers to Migori in Western Kenya. St Margaret Mary School has had to explain the distances involved and the extra screening measures being undertaken around the world to put parents and other members of the school at ease.
Cases like this suggest that irrational Ebola fears will continue to hurt Kenya and other African nations not affected by the disease. The problem is likely to get worse over the next one year as the number of Ebola cases rise.
The World Health Organisation estimates that there could be as many as 10,000 new cases reported every week within the next two months.
“Ebola can damage Africa's economic revival,” Paz Casal, a Spain-based travel and tourism research analyst, told Bloomberg News in August, “resurfacing the continent's negative stereotypes as a place of disease, famine and poverty.”
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