Theme: Kenya

Kenyan authorities, together with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Kenyan Red Cross, began around October 31 registering at the Harhosa and OMC shelters in Marsabit County the Ethiopians fleeing the clashes in Moyale, a border town jointly administered by the Oromia and Somali regions, with more than 50,000 crossings since late October, according to Kenyan media, and agencies appealed for about $8.9 million for three months of response, in an Addis Standard text republished by AllAfrica.

Up to an estimated 50,000 people crossed into Kenya, according to local authorities cited by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), following clashes between the armies of southern Ethiopia’s Somali and Oromia regions; UNHCR deployed an emergency team to Moyale.

Fighting in southern Ethiopia has pushed some 50,000 people across the border into Kenya since clashes erupted last week, the United Nations said, citing local authorities. Fatima Mohammed-Cole, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative for Kenya, said up to 50,000 people have crossed into Kenya, according to local authorities. The clashes pit the armies of the Somali and Oromia regions against each other.

Approximately 36,000 people crossed from Ethiopia into Kenya fleeing conflict in and around Moyale, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Kenya, with food, clean water, shelter, sanitation and healthcare as the most urgent needs. Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights reports about 40,000 refugees in Moyale, with more than 15,000 in eight temporary shelters.

Kenya released 20 Ebola contacts from quarantine. The 20 people released completed 21 days of monitoring without developing Ebola symptoms and are in good health, according to the Miami Herald.

More than 14,000 Ethiopians have fled deadly fighting in southern Ethiopia into neighbouring Kenya, humanitarian officials said, amid fears that clashes between rival communities have killed more than a dozen people, according to TRT World. The Kenya Red Cross said more than 10,900 displaced people were being accommodated at six temporary camps in the border town of Moyale, while another 4,000 were staying with relatives and host families.

Kenya has recorded its second death from Ebola as it handles its first ever outbreak of the disease, according to the BBC. Seven other Ebola patients were receiving treatment at two isolation facilities, the broadcaster said.

Kenya’s health ministry announced on Friday the country’s second Ebola death, a 65-year-old woman who was a close relative of the first patient and developed symptoms while in quarantine, according to SCMP. Kenya has confirmed nine cases so far, including the two deaths, and the remaining seven patients are receiving treatment at two isolation facilities, according to the Hindustan Times, citing the ministry.

The Ebola patient in Nigeria is a Swiss woman, the wife of a Swiss diplomat, who has not travelled to the epicentre of the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is believed to have contracted the virus while travelling with her husband in Uganda, the Swiss foreign ministry has said. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating whether the patient may have come into contact with an Ebola patient in Kenya, as both travelled from Uganda's Entebbe airport on October 3. The World Health Organization (WHO) said investigations were continuing to establish the likely source of infection for the Ebola patient in Nigeria.

Kenya has confirmed a new Ebola case, bringing the total number of infections in the country to nine, amid an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to Al Jazeera.

Pastor Paul Mackenzie, leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult linked to more than 400 deaths, was convicted Monday of murdering 190 children and one adult after ordering followers to starve themselves to death to meet Jesus, the Associated Press reported. Justice Diana Kavedza ruled that Mackenzie, leader of the Good News International Church, oversaw an organized system that used religious teachings to compel followers to fast until they died. A mitigation hearing will be held on Oct. 30, while sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 6.

Kenya’s health authorities have confirmed an eighth Ebola case in the country, a 49-year-old patient attendant, according to Chinese state agency Xinhua. Of 38 people tested on Sunday, one came back positive for the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, the agency reported. The United States (US) raised its travel advisory for Kenya as cases reached eight, according to AllAfrica.

A court in Kenya found the leader of a Christian doomsday sect, Paul Mackenzie, guilty of murdering 191 people, all but one of them children, the BBC reported. Mackenzie and his Good News International Church organized a sect that ordered followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the world ended and “meet Jesus”, according to prosecutors cited by Al Jazeera. Twenty-nine other leaders of the sect were also convicted of murder in the same trial, the BBC reported; they had all pleaded not guilty and repeatedly insisted that nobody was forced to die.

Kenya detected an eighth Ebola case, bringing the total number of known infections in the country to eight, after reporting four new cases on Saturday — three of them health workers who treated the country’s first patient, a man who traveled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to Nairobi and died at a hospital in the capital on October 5, according to Al Jazeera.

Kenya confirmed four new cases of the Ebola Bundibugyo virus, bringing the total to seven, including one death, and three of the new cases are health workers who treated the country’s first patient, according to Kenya’s Ministry of Health in a statement posted on X on Saturday. All four were in quarantine when they developed symptoms and were quickly isolated.

An Ebola death in Kenya last week is highlighting the urgency of Africa’s public health emergency preparedness, with governments across the continent committing their national budgets to the health sector, according to Inter Press Service (IPS), in a text republished by AllAfrica. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that the current Ebola strain was spreading so fast that, for emergency health workers, “it was like fighting a megafire.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the Alimbongo health zone, in North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), reported ebola cases for the first time, with four confirmed cases and two deaths as of October 6, according to Al Jazeera. The WHO also recorded 8,728 confirmed cases and 4,205 deaths in the DRC as of October 6. The same day, Kenya confirmed its first imported case of Bundibugyo virus disease, also according to the WHO.

Kenya announced on Tuesday the country’s first death from Ebola, according to DW. The patient travelled overland to Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and then took a flight to Nairobi on October 3. The health minister said 28 people who came into contact with the patient, including relatives and health workers, had been identified and would be quarantined. The case makes Kenya the fourth country to record an Ebola case in the current outbreak, declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in mid-May.

Kenya has confirmed its first case of Ebola, a Kenyan citizen who had been living in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past seven years, the BBC reported. The patient died days after arriving in Nairobi. Health Minister Duale said 28 contacts have been identified so far, including family members and health workers. The DRC has recorded more than 8,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths, according to The Guardian.