By any measure of national interest, public health or basic common sense, the decision by the Kenyan government to permit the United States to establish an Ebola quarantine and treatment centre at Laikipia Airbase is indefensible.
This deal, which seeks to fly American citizens suspected of contracting Ebola from the Democratic Republic of Congo into Kenya, must be rejected by every Kenyan who values the lives and future of this country.
The first question that demands an answer is painfully simple: Why Kenya? It defies logic that the United States, with the most advanced medical infrastructure in the world, would choose to airlift its citizens suspected of having Ebola to Kenya rather than directly to American soil.
If these patients are American, and if America has the capacity, why are they not being treated in Boston, Atlanta or Bethesda? The answer leads to only one conclusion: Kenya is being used as an offshore medical buffer zone. We are being asked to host a risk that the US itself will not accept within its own borders.
Even more puzzling is the geography of this decision. Congo has vast tracts of free land and dense forests far from major population centres. If the United States is determined to manage its citizens outside its borders, why could it not build this facility there, in Congo itself?
It would be logical to isolate, treat and monitor patients at the source of the outbreak, and only once they are confirmed free from the Ebola threat should they be flown straight to their country. To instead transport them across international borders into Kenya, a nation that has no Ebola, introduces unnecessary risk to millions who are currently safe.
Even more shocking is the timing. At a moment when every other East African nation has tightened its borders against Ebola, Kenya has chosen to fling ours wide open. The United States itself has strict protocols that would bar such patients from landing on its mainland without extraordinary safeguards. Yet here we are, welcoming what others have refused.
To call this reckless is an understatement. To many Kenyans, it feels like the administration has willingly invited biochemical warfare into the country in exchange for a few dollars.
Once Ebola patients land in Laikipia, that will mark the beginning of a catastrophe we may never contain. We need only look at the Democratic Republic of Congo, the origin point of Ebola, to see our future.
In Congo, Ebola does not merely appear and disappear. It recurs and returns. It burrows into communities and resurfaces years later. Is that the fate we wish to import? Kenya has lived for decades without Ebola, so why should we now subject 55 million people to a disease we have successfully kept out?
We are told that medical personnel attending to these patients will be drawn from both the US and Kenya. That assurance is not comfort; it is a warning. This is precisely how the disease will escape containment.
Kenyan health workers have families. They have parents in Nyeri, spouses in Kisumu, children in Mombasa. They will travel and also go home on leave. They will attend funerals and weddings, and with each movement, the risk multiplies.
The statistics from Congo are chilling. Ebola has killed over 220 health workers across multiple outbreaks. The 2018-2020 epidemic was the deadliest for medical staff in the country’s history, with 168 documented infections among health workers and over 25 deaths.
The 2024-2026 surge, driven by the rare Bundibugyo strain, has already claimed dozens more nurses and medics. So to imagine that Kenya will be different is to ignore history and science.
Listening to Health CS Aden Duale attempt to justify this deal on national television was to witness a government that appears unmoved by the weight of its duty to protect its citizens.
To argue that “our armed forces are in Congo” is pedestrian reasoning.
Yes, our troops are in Congo, but they are there on a peacekeeping mission under international mandate. They did not go to import disease. There is a world of difference between deploying soldiers to stabilise a neighbour and deliberately flying Ebola into Laikipia. One is duty while the other is surrender.
What makes this entire affair even more disturbing is the contempt for the rule of law. The High Court has already issued an injunction stopping the setting up of this facility. Yet both the Kenyan government and the US government have defied that order and continued with construction.
This lawlessness has already prompted residents of Laikipia to take to the streets. When a government ignores its own courts to push through a foreign deal that endangers its people, what legitimacy does it retain?
This is neither a partnership nor diplomacy but the outsourcing of risk to a nation that cannot afford it. Kenya’s health system is still recovering from Covid-19. Our counties struggle with basic drugs and equipment. Hence, we cannot gamble with Ebola.
The people of Kenya must speak with one voice: reject this deal. Parliament must summon the Executive and demand answers. Civil society must challenge this in every court. Laikipia must not become ground zero for a disease we invited.
We have one country. We have one chance to keep it safe, so let us not trade the lives of Kenyans for diplomatic favours or development cheques. History will not forgive us if we stay silent while Ebola is flown in.
