Politics and policy
Health officials screen a traveller for Ebola at Namanga on the Tanzania-Kenya border in September. PHOTO | FILE
By SARAH OOKO
The Treasury is seeking parliamentary approval to
withdraw Sh729 million to keep Ebola out of Kenya’s borders as experts
warn that the deadly virus is likely to last until the end of 2015.
The cash request is contained in a mini-budget tabled in
Parliament by Majority Leader Aden Duale where the Treasury is seeking
MPs’ nod for an additional Sh57 billion.
The Health ministry says it received Sh350 million
from the Treasury from its Sh680 million Ebola budget, forcing it to
scale back on some emergency measures to keep at bay a disease that has
killed about 7,518 people so far, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra
Leone.
The government has been unable to buy five mobile
units as well as build six fixed isolation centres in Nairobi, Mombasa,
Eldoret, Nakuru and Kisumu.
This, together with hand sprayers and
disinfectants, was to cost Sh338 million according to a budget presented
to Parliament on August 18.
The budget indicated that Sh332, 352,000 was to
finance service delivery and associated activities such as training in
286 sub-counties and producing brochures for the general public on
Ebola.
Kenya is one of 19 countries the World Bank says is
at risk of Ebola. Though the outbreak has seemingly peaked, analysts
reckon the epidemic in West Africa is likely to continue through 2015.”
‘‘We need to be ready for a long effort, a
sustained effort (for) probably the rest of 2015,” Prof Peter Piot, the
director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the
BBC last week. Mr Piot was one of the scientists who discovered Ebola
in 1976.
Kenya has established a permanent isolation ward at
Kenyatta National Hospital, bought protective gear and eight thermal
scanners that will be used at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
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