By Emma Farge
GENEVA/NAIROBI, July 17 (Reuters) – Seven American aid workers who had been in Congo to fight the Ebola outbreak are quarantining at a new isolation facility in Kenya after the U.S. government introduced travel restrictions, the head of a U.S. charity employing them told Reuters.
The aid workers are the first known people to quarantine at the facility, which has sparked huge opposition in Kenya and is at the heart of a legal case in which a court has ordered the work to be suspended. Construction continued however, according to U.S. officials and satellite imagery reviewed by Reuters.
Washington’s new policy says American citizens returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is an Ebola outbreak, must spend three weeks in a third country before entering the United States.
The U.S. government is building the 50-bed bio-isolation unit on an air force base in central Kenya for asymptomatic Americans exposed to the virus in Democratic Republic of Congo or Uganda. Many Kenyans are angered at what they see as the U.S. offloading the health risk such patients pose.
Last month, Kenya’s health minister announced an immediate halt to the facility’s construction after he was found in contempt of court for failing to observe the order to halt work pending a final ruling.
“Samaritan’s Purse has seven American Disaster Assistance Response Team staff members there,” Franklin Graham, president and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, told Reuters in response to questions.
“None of them have any symptoms, but they are being quarantined by the Kenyan government for 21 days,” Graham said.
AID WORKERS UNDER U.S. HEALTH OBSERVATION
A U.S. State Department official told Reuters a group of asymptomatic Americans who had served on the front lines of the Ebola response had “voluntarily moved to the Kenya facility for precautionary monitoring and isolation.”
“Kenyan authorities have authorized their movement into the facility under the observation of the U.S. Public Health Service clinicians,” the official said, adding that the decision was taken “strictly out of an abundance of caution.”
Kenyan health ministry officials did not immediately respond to calls or requests for comment on the move. A senior Kenyan foreign ministry official said they had no information on it.
Another source familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity said that the group had arrived at the site in central Kenya on Monday and were sleeping in army cots in tents.
He said some had treated Ebola patients at the Christian aid group’s treatment centres in Congo but others had carried out work such as construction, with no direct contact with the sick.
“There is one potential high risk exposure,” he said, adding that their health was being monitored. Kenyan authorities are not allowing the group to leave the facility to travel anywhere else in the country, he added.
The often fatal viral disease spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids from infected people or animals.
CALLS FOR TREATMENT IN KENYA
Samaritan’s Purse, which has been promised several million dollars from the Trump administration for the Ebola response, is an evangelical Christian group that works in disaster zones around the world.
It is one of the biggest foreign aid groups treating Ebola in Congo and has the largest number of Americans there, working closely alongside the World Health Organization to contain the outbreak.
One of its U.S. staff members who caught Ebola earlier this month was transferred to a hospital in Germany on Monday. The State Department official said any decisions on treatment would be made on a case-by-case basis.
There is no proven treatment for or vaccine against the rare Bundibugyo species of the virus, which has already killed at least 828 people since mid-May, and the World Health Organization says it is still spreading largely undetected.
Graham, who had criticised the travel restrictions, said he would like Americans who catch Ebola to benefit from treatment in Kenya, after members of the group toured the facility this week.
“It’s a state-of-the-art facility. If somebody did get sick, that’s the place you want to take them,” he said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Ammu Kannampilly in Nairobi and Maria Tsvetkova in New York, Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Philippa Fletcher)
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