Kenya: Health Minister insists no ebola outbreak in country

Kenya is not in the grips of an ebola outbreak the country's health secretary insisted on Wednesday, in the wake of Kenya's first death from the disease.

Aden Duale, Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for Health, said, "there's no Ebola outbreak in Kenya. What we have is an important incident, an Ebola incident in our country, and we can account for the journey, the path and journey of that patient from (unintelligible) to Kisangani to Beni to Kinshasa to Kampala to Nairobi and finally to Nairobi hospital."

The health secretary added that endeavours to trace all contacts of the victim have been stepped up, stating that, "of the initial 55 identified contacts, an additional two have been added, bringing the total of contacts to 57. Ten of them have been accounted for and they are already under a quarantine facility. They are undergoing daily symptoms monitoring at the National Police Service Hospital in Nairobi. Efforts to trace the remaining contacts are being intensified."

His comments came a day after a Kenyan citizen who had been living in Congo over the weekend became the first confirmed case of the disease. In the DRC, an outbreak was declared in May, months after it had been spreading in an isolated part of eastern Congo.