The Ebola outbreak has claimed a second life in Kenya, health officials said late on Friday, as the outbreak that began in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues its alarming spread across Africa. In a hopeful counter-move, the World Health Organization has begun a first-of-its-kind vaccine trial in Congo that scientists hope can slow the deadliest Ebola emergency in the country’s history.
The Kenyan victim was a 65-year-old woman, a close relative of the country’s first Ebola patient. She had been in quarantine when she developed symptoms on 13 October. The first patient, a man who had been treated at several hospitals in Congo before travelling to Nairobi, died on 5 October.
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Kenya’s Outbreak in Numbers
Kenya’s health ministry says the country now has nine confirmed cases, all within a single cluster. The seven surviving patients — three relatives of the first victim, three health workers and a hospital cleaner — are being treated at two isolation facilities. Officials have traced 135 contacts of the first patient and stress there is no evidence of community spread so far.
Still, the concern is real. The United States has raised its travel advisory for Kenya, urging Americans to reconsider travel because of the health risks.
Ebola Outbreak: The Widest Spread Africa Has Seen
The outbreak has now been reported in four countries — Congo, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria, which confirmed its first case on Tuesday — giving it the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent. At its source in Congo, the numbers are grim: more than 9,700 cases and over 4,600 deaths since the outbreak was declared in May, the worst in the country’s history, and the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern.
The villain is the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, a rarer strain for which there is no approved vaccine and no proven treatment. The virus spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of a sick person and can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in severe cases, internal and external bleeding.
A Vaccine Trial Called “Hope”
Against that bleak background, Friday brought a genuine milestone. In Bunia, the capital of Congo’s Ituri province at the centre of the epidemic, the first volunteers were vaccinated under a WHO-backed clinical trial named Tumaini — Swahili for “hope.”
The trial’s first candidate is Ervebo, a vaccine already approved against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola. The big question is whether it offers any cross-protection against Bundibugyo. Two vaccines designed specifically for Bundibugyo — one from the University of Oxford and one using mRNA technology from Moderna — are expected to join the trial soon. The study uses ring vaccination, prioritising the people at highest risk, such as contacts of confirmed cases.
“Science gives us hope,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as the first doses were given. Whether that hope turns into a working shield against Bundibugyo is now the most important unanswered question in African public health.
What the Ebola outbreak looks like now: Kenya has nine confirmed cases, all within a single cluster, after a 65-year-old woman — a close relative of the country’s first patient — became the second death. The seven surviving patients are being treated at two isolation facilities, officials have traced 135 contacts of the first patient, and there is no evidence of community spread so far.
Across Africa, the outbreak has now been reported in four countries — Congo, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria — the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent. In Congo alone there have been more than 9,700 cases and over 4,600 deaths since May, and in Bunia the first volunteers have been vaccinated under the WHO-backed trial named Tumaini, Swahili for “hope.”
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