An Africa court has put a stop to a United States plan to establish a quarantine facility in Kenya for Americans exposed to a rare type of Ebola virus instead of flying them home where it could increase the risk of a U.S. outbreak.
The suspension by the High Court of Kenya follows a backlash by medical workers and activists over the U.S. plan to deal with the rare virus spreading in the northeastern Congo.
Kenya shares a border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On Wednesday an official told the Associated Press that the U.S. was planning to send exposed people to the Kenyan facility, but it was unclear where the new facility would be built or whether the Kenyan government had signed off on the plan.
The Kenyan government only revealed talks with the U.S. on support for Ebola preparedness “but did not address the facility,” AP reported.
However, the court in Nairobi on Friday put a stop to any agreement on the Ebola facility until petitions opposing it are heard next week.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the U.S. government intends to commit $13.5 million toward Kenya’s Ebola preparedness effort but also wants to keep the virus from heading to American shores.
“We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States,” he said during a cabinet meeting Wednesday.
The Katiba Institute, an organization formed to defend Kenya’s Constitution, and the Kenya Law Society separately challenged in court any presence of Ebola-related facilities.
Kenya Law Society’s legal petition asked the court to nullify any agreements between the U.S. and Kenya on the project, “citing public health risks and a lack of public participation,” according to AP.
It also said that Kenya lacks “the high-containment infrastructure required to safely manage such a facility, exposing the public to serious health risks.”
According to the wire service:
A Kenyan doctors’ union on Thursday issued a 48-hour strike notice should the country proceed with the deal. It said the U.S. was clear that they would not allow Ebola on their soil and therefore Kenya should not become another “dumping ground.”
“As the vanguard of Kenya’s healthcare system, we are utterly disgusted by the government’s apparent willingness to trade national biosecurity and the lives of its citizens for foreign aid,” the union’s chairperson, Davji Atellah, said in a statement.
Working with scant supplies, health workers in the northeastern Congo have struggled to contain an outbreak of the Bundibugyo virus, a kind of Ebola that has no approved treatment or vaccine.
More than 1,000 suspected cases, with at least 220 deaths, have been confirmed by the Congolese government since it declared an outbreak on May 15.
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) suspects the outbreak is much larger as it has been spreading undetected for weeks, according to the AP report. Nearby Uganda has also confirmed seven cases and one death.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more