Kenya has confirmed a third case of the Bundibugyo virus disease, a strain of Ebola that has killed thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The case was recorded 10 days after Kenya reported its first case and death in Nairobi.
The latest patient is a 65-year-old woman who is a primary contact and a close relative of the first two cases, the Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The ministry said she had been in quarantine since October 6. After she developed fever, a sore throat and malaise, she was isolated, and a test confirmed she had the virus.
How the Nairobi cases were linked
The ministry said the woman was diagnosed early and is receiving supportive care, which it said improves her chances of recovery. Her case is tied to the first patient, a Kenyan man who had been ill in the DRC about a month before he travelled by road to Uganda.
He flew to Nairobi on October 3, and a relative drove him to hospital. He died on October 5. In a statement posted on X, the ministry sought to reassure the public that there was no community spread and that the risk to Kenyans remained low.
Of 130 contacts listed, 127 had been traced and were in quarantine, the ministry said. Officials have stressed that tracing efforts are ongoing, although the outbreak has been difficult to contain because the Bundibugyo strain has no licensed vaccine. Research is underway on one or more vaccines, and some candidates are already in early-phase testing in humans.
Concerns over Ebola response funding in Congo
The announcement came as Africa’s leading public health body and Congolese health authorities called for greater openness about how Ebola response money is spent. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said financial information from aid organisations suggested more than $700m in donor money could not be accounted for.
Dr Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa CDC, told a news agency that international donors had disbursed about $962m to organisations carrying out Ebola response work in the DRC, rather than to the government. According to Kaseya, those organisations reported receiving $228m, of which $127m had been spent and roughly $100m remained available. He added that it was too early to speak of embezzlement.
Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba warned in a post on X that aid groups must provide details of their funding sources to his ministry. Groups that fail to do so, he said, risk being barred from working in the DRC and blacklisted across Africa.
Ebola detected in new Congolese province
Meanwhile, inside the DRC, Ebola cases have been found in a new province that borders the Central African Republic. Two health officials told a news agency on Thursday that the two cases were confirmed in North Ubangi.
The officials said North Ubangi is the eighth Congolese province affected by the Bundibugyo outbreak. Congolese authorities have not yet officially announced that the disease has spread to the province. The DRC’s epidemic is the second-largest on record globally, with more than 9,000 cases and over 4,300 deaths since it was officially detected in May.
