Kenya records its first Ebola death after a flight from Kampala

A Kenyan man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for seven years died in Nairobi after samples tested positive for Bundibugyo Ebola, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said on Tuesday. It is Kenya's first confirmed case of the virus. He died on Monday night. The ministry said a safe and dignified burial was being arranged under Ebola protocols.

Duale, speaking at Afya House, said the man fell ill about a month ago while still in Congo and was treated at several facilities there before he left. He travelled by road from Congo to Kampala. From the Ugandan capital he boarded Jambojet flight 8523 and landed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 1.10pm on 3 October, the EastAfrican reported from the ministry briefing. Port health and immigration staff screened him in the ordinary way. A relative and a friend then drove him to Nairobi Hospital.

At the hospital he was isolated in a separate room in the accident and emergency department and later moved to the East Wing isolation facility, built during the Covid-19 pandemic. Doctors recorded fever, chills, intense fatigue, weakness, painful swallowing, muscle pain and bleeding under the skin. They suspected a viral haemorrhagic fever because of those signs and his travel history, and sent samples to the laboratory.

The samples tested positive for Bundibugyo Ebola virus disease at both the National Virology Reference Laboratory and the Kenya Medical Research Institute laboratory. He was given supportive treatment. There is no approved vaccine or licensed treatment for the Bundibugyo species, the BBC noted in its account of the briefing, though candidates have been trialled. That is a different problem from the Zaire strain, for which vaccines were used in later Congo outbreaks.

The ministry has named 28 contacts so far, among them family members and health workers, and is following them. It is also tracing 23 passengers and four crew who were on the same flight, and said quarantine arrangements were being made for people judged to be at risk. Nairobi Hospital has tightened infection control, contact tracing and staff monitoring, The Star reported.

Kenya has been on alert since the Congo outbreak began in May 2026. Duale said 652,584 travellers had been screened by 6 October. Laboratories have tested 267 samples at five sites: the national virology laboratory, KEMRI laboratories in Nairobi and Kisumu, and two mobile laboratories at the Busia and Lwakhakha border points. Those numbers show the scale of the watch, and also how a single road-and-air journey still got through routine screening.

The public detail that matters for other airports is the timeline. The man was ill for about a month in Congo, crossed by road into Uganda, flew on a commercial ticket, passed ordinary screening, and only then was taken by relatives to a city hospital. Symptoms that point to haemorrhagic fever appeared after admission. By the time the laboratories confirmed Bundibugyo, he had already died. The contact list is still being built from the flight manifest and from the people who moved him.

Bundibugyo is one of the less common Ebola species. Fatality in past outbreaks has been lower than in Zaire strain epidemics, but the Kenyan case is an import into a capital that handles a large share of East African connecting traffic. Kampala was the transfer point. Any further case among the 23 passengers would change the map from a single imported death to a multi-country contact chain.

Duale did not name the patient. The ministry has not published a seat number or a full passenger list. What it has published is enough to fix the route: Congo clinics, a road to Kampala, Jambojet 8523, a 1.10pm landing on 3 October, Nairobi Hospital, two confirming laboratories, death on Monday night, 28 contacts, and a separate search for 27 people who shared the aircraft. The burial was planned for later on Tuesday under the safe-burial rules used in Ebola responses.

The open question is whether the flight trace closes at 27 people or grows once Uganda and Congo add the clinics and the road contacts. Kenya has the laboratories and the border posts already running. The first death arrived by a scheduled flight after a clear screen at the desk.