Duale struggles to win over MPs on secretive US Ebola deal

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale answering questions in Parliament on Wednesday, June 3. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale faced a charged House plenary on Wednesday as MPs vowed to resist a government deal to host a US-backed Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya.

Duale appeared before the House at the direction of the Speaker to brief MPs on Kenya's Ebola preparedness measures, disclosing that about 71,243 people had been screened at the country's borders, including two hundred and fifty-six (256) in the previous 24 hours.

Kenya has not recorded any confirmed Ebola cases.

Twenty-two suspected alerts from Kiambu, Nyamira, Kisumu, and Bungoma counties have all tested negative, he said, with three further alerts from Nairobi, Uasin Gishu, and Bungoma also returning negative results.

The country has four designated laboratories for Ebola testing at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), and in Nairobi and Kisumu, plus a mobile lab at Busia for the border region, though the CS acknowledged that additional financing was required to improve capacity.

At the centre of MPs' fury was the planned Ebola facility at the Laikipia Air Base, which forms part of a Kenya-US agreement on biological and infectious disease threat reduction, originally signed on July 24, 2015, during former President Uhuru Kenyatta's visit to the United States.

According to the CS, the agreement, approved by Cabinet, was extended to run until 2029.

Teso South MP Mary Emaase argued she would not allow the Alupe Sub-County Referral Hospital in Busia to be converted into an Ebola isolation centre.

"I have listened to the CS, and I have a concern. The ministry officials were in Teso South with a proposal to convert Alupe hospital to manage Ebola. We will resist, we will protect our people on this, but Alupe will not be converted," said Emaase.

Robert Mbui, Deputy Minority Leader, questioned whether Kenya was being made to bear risks on behalf of American citizens.

"I wanted to know, where in that agreement between Kenya and the US does it say we can expose Kenyans at the expense of the US? Is it true that the centre to be in the Mt Kenya region is supposed to be used by US citizens and not Kenyans," Mbui asked.

Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro told the CS he had yet to meet a single Kenyan who supported the quarantine arrangement. "CS should put himself in Kenyans' position," Nyoro noted.

Mombasa County Woman Representative Chimba Zamzam Mohammed was more blunt. "Anything is possible. They should go back to where they got the disease or to the US," Mohammed told the House.

Majority Leader Kimani Ichungwah, however, backed the government's position, arguing that preparedness was a mark of responsibility.

"As a responsible country, should we have isolation centres because this disease is happening around us? It will help Kenyans who may catch the disease. Ebola is a dangerous disease from what we have seen, and so we must be prepared," Ichungwah observed.

Duale, closing the debate, said the matter was too urgent to leave to politics.

"This epidemic does not require any consultation. Tomorrow, God forbid if Ebola is found in this country, this House will call me back here. So before Kenyans die, before Kenyans are infected, we as government have a moral, constitutional responsibility to protect both Kenyans and other people who live within our borders.”

The facility at Laikipia is one of 23 similar units planned across the country as part of a national preparedness and response framework, to be jointly run by the Kenyan government and the US under the command of the Kenya Air Force (KAF) base commander, working alongside the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) medical team and the Ministry of Health.

High Court has since suspended the arrangement pending the hearing and determination of a case file by Katiba Institute and the Law Society of Kenya, with a High Court judge barring the government from taking steps to build or begin operations at the facility.

The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) had earlier issued a 48-hour strike alert, accusing the government of turning the country into a "dumping ground" for Americans exposed to Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).