The Ministry of Health (MoH) has advised Kenyans not to touch bodies of people who have died of unknown diseases.
MoH in a statement said the ministry is ready to facilitate safe burials.
“The Ministry of Health advises members of the public to not handle/touch bodies of people who died of unknown cause or those suspected to have died due to Ebola.
“The Ministry of Health is ready to support safe and dignified burials of all bodies suspected to have died due to Ebola,” the ministry said in a statement.
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There has been an Ebola outbreak in Uganda that has caused the Kenyan government to be on high alert.
Last month, Uganda’s Ministry of Health said that Ebola had spread to the eastern part of the country beyond the epicenter in the central region.
Ruth Aceng, minister of health, tweeted Sunday that a confirmed fatal case, who is a 45-year-old male, had been reported in the Jinja district of eastern Uganda.
The confirmed fatal case died at his home on November 10, Aceng tweeted.
According to her tweets, the confirmed case was linked to a probable case, his brother, who traveled to Jinja from the Ugandan capital Kampala where he was said to have contracted the disease, and died on November 3 after falling ill for 10 days in the Jinja district.
Contact tracing and epidemiological investigations were activated, Aceng added.
Ebola vaccine
On December 8, Uganda received 1,200 experimental vaccine doses designed to work against the Sudan strain of the Ebola virus that will be used in scientific trials.
The country has so far confirmed 142 cases of the Sudan strain, with 56 deaths, since it announced an outbreak of Ebola in September.
Currently, there is no vaccine proven to be effective against this strain of the viral haemorrhagic fever.
The vaccine will be administered to people who have been in contact with those who tested positive for the virus, in what is called ring vaccination.
Researchers hope to recruit at least 3,000 people, aged six years and above, to take part in the study, which will be conducted by a team of Ugandan scientists.
The vaccine, made by the Sabin Institute in the US, was given to the Ugandan government as a donation by the WHO. It has already been proven to be safe for use in human trials.
There have been no new positive cases in Uganda in almost three weeks, and the last of the people who had been hospitalised were released on November 30. There have been concerns that the vaccine doses have arrived at the tail end of the epidemic in Uganda.
