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Turning to Kenya, where anger is uh brewing over a US-backed plan to quarantine American Ebola patients on Kenyan soil, even though the country has not reported an outbreak of its own. The controversy has triggered protests and accusations that Kenya is uh being asked to take on a health risk and Washington uh that Washington would not accept at home. And joining us now from Nairobi is journalist Ruud uh Olmentorp. Thank you for being here and uh sharing more on this developing story. Thank you, Emily. Um currently, the mood in Kenya is uh calm, although tense. There has been no new demonstrations yet the next few days, so the police didn't have to um to step in cuz unfortunately, three
people died in those protests. But uh the thing is not over because the building of the Ebola center is just continuing against the court order, so that makes sure that the tension is not gone yet. So, what is the uh you are journalist, so I know you're able to really take a uh you know, a closer look at all of the facets of the story, but what is the reason for the protest in the first place? Well, the first reason is that people are scared that Ebola will come to Kenya, which is not a strange thought because Kenya uh during the 17 outbreaks that have been there in the last decades, Kenya did not have a single case of Ebola. So,
people are scared when you bring people who are potentially infected that the virus might spread in this country. And then secondly, the government has not been very opaque in their process. Suddenly, the Americans were there with 13.8 million uh dollars to build a facility, and the people were not informed. So, you could see on many Kenyan channels that the complaints were about that, a lack of transparency. Mhm. And uh how is the gun the government handling it? Is it properly being handled all of the protests? Well, the lack of transparency somehow continues. What the authorities are now doing is setting it against the um an existing policy in which there are
already 23 other centers which could be able to handle infections, but still that's not enough for the people. They keep wondering why suddenly the Americans and why suddenly infected people from another country. So um the Kenyan courts have actually suspended the project, correct? So but reports are saying that the US planes personnel are still arriving. Is this becoming a sovereignty issue as much as a public health scare? Yeah. Well, the court uh has issued a stop order, but that stop order has not been followed up by the Ministry of Health because they look at the constitution which says that in case of medical emergencies, the authorities have the right to continue
um measures against health risks, and that's what's happening now. But for the people, that's not really nice because they see that their judges are being bypassed and the construction is happening on a remote airbase, so nobody so far has seen anything. You can only see from the sky. There's been some satellite images in which you can see 12 white tents, but that's it. Nobody has seen anything which is happening inside there. All right. So thank you very much, Ruud, for your insights. Thank you, too.
