A family that brought Kenya its first brush with Ebola has now lost a second member. The health ministry said on Friday night that a 65-year-old woman, a close relative of the man who died of the disease earlier this month, had died in an infectious disease unit in Nairobi. She had already been in quarantine as a known contact when she fell ill on 13 October and was admitted that day for supportive care. Doctors, said the ministry’s top official Patrick Amoth, “did everything possible” for her.
She was the third person in Kenya confirmed with Bundibugyo virus, a form of Ebola for which no licensed vaccine exists. The country now has nine confirmed infections and two deaths. Seven people remain under treatment in isolation: three more members of the same family, three medical staff and a cleaner from a hospital. Officials stress that every case so far traces back to the same circle of known contacts and that there is no sign of the virus moving through the wider community.
The outbreak reached Kenya with a traveller. The first patient became sick in September in the Democratic Republic of Congo, passed through several clinics there, and died in Nairobi in early October a few days after arriving. Continent-wide, the epidemic that Congo declared in May has now killed over 4,000 people, a toll exceeded by only one earlier Ebola outbreak.
Trained teams will bury the woman under infection-control rules while respecting her family’s wishes, the ministry said. Its advice to the public: keep away from a sick person’s blood or other fluids, leave the bodies of people who died of an unclear illness untouched, and use soap and water frequently. Anyone with fever, weakness, vomiting or unexplained bleeding is told to get help at once, including through the free 719 hotline.
