Kenya facility for Americans exposed to Ebola to open on Friday

Kenya facility for Americans exposed to Ebola to open on Friday

If you are an American health worker overseas, don’t expect to immediately come home if you are exposed to Ebola. 

© Moses Sawasawa, Associated Press

A 50-bed field hospital quarantine facility for Americans that is being constructed in Kenya will be operational on Friday, according to senior administration officials. If someone tests positive or develops symptoms while at the facility, they will then be sent elsewhere for advanced care.  

Officials weren’t clear where they would go for the advanced care, but it would likely be somewhere in Europe, not in the U.S.   

The facility will be located at the Kenyan Air Force’s Laikipia Air Base, outside the city of Nanyuki. It will eventually include a number of biocontainment and isolation units to hold people who test positive or develop symptoms until they can be transported to more specialized facilities, though the officials did not say when those units would be operational. 

Sending asymptomatic “high risk” Americans from affected countries to a separate country to quarantine is a significant departure from previous Ebola outbreaks, when Americans exposed to the virus were often flown back to the U.S. for quarantine or treatment at specialized facilities.   

The Trump administration has been reluctant to bring back any American citizen who was infected or exposed to Ebola. In August 2014, Trump repeatedly criticized the Obama administration’s moves to repatriate U.S. citizens. 

Officials said the Kenya facility will initially be staffed by 30 U.S. public-health officers, who trained for three days earlier this week and are now en route to Kenya. An additional cadre will begin training this weekend and depart next week. 

Officials........

© The Hill