CS Duale said the government had heightened surveillance across all major border crossings.

📻 Breaking It Down

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 27 – Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has announced a raft of emergency preparedness measures aimed at shielding Kenya from a potential Ebola outbreak, including the establishment of temporary holding centers at border entry points bordering Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Speaking during Eid al-Adha celebrations, Duale said the government had heightened surveillance across all major border crossings, deploying screening personnel and verification teams to monitor travellers entering the country from neighbouring states considered at risk.

He revealed that mobile laboratories have already been activated and are operating at key frontier posts along the Kenya–Uganda and Kenya–South Sudan borders to support rapid testing and response efforts.

📌 What You Need to Know

“Under serious screening and verification, we are also putting up a holding area within the border in the event that we get a case. So the country is fully, fully prepared for this border,” said Duale.

According to the Health CS, Kenya’s preparedness strategy also includes enhanced laboratory capacity, with three national testing facilities now operating continuously to process Ebola samples throughout the week.

He said the laboratories are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure rapid detection, testing and isolation of any suspected infections before wider transmission can occur.

In addition to border monitoring and laboratory surveillance, Duale disclosed that the government has rolled out an aggressive contact-tracing and travel-monitoring programme targeting individuals who may have recently travelled to Ebola-affected regions.

The ministry, he said, is actively identifying, tracing and testing people believed to have visited high-risk areas in the past month as part of broader containment efforts.

“Thirdly, we are doing a lot of traceability. Anybody we feel who has been to that region in the last one month, we are testing them and making sure that we protect our country,” he said.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya