All clear after Ebola scare at Nairobi hospital

[News_Editor]

All clear after Ebola scare at Nairobi hospital

2011-12-24 10:37:24 GMT+7 (ICT)

NAIROBI (BNO NEWS) -- A woman who died at a hospital in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Thursday morning did not have Ebola or other well-known infectious diseases, Kenyan and U.S. health authorities confirmed on Friday. The cause of death remains unknown.

The 29-year-old woman, who was identified as Gladys Muthoni, was taken by taxi to Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi but died before she could be taken out of the car by doctors. She had complained of sharp pains all over her body and a headache before starting to vomit blood.

Because the symptoms appeared to be similar to those of the deadly Ebola virus, health authorities immediately declared an alert and launched a major investigation. Muthoni's father, a friend and the taxi driver who transported her were placed in quarantine as a precaution.

Later on Thursday, experts from the Kenya Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (MOPHS), the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Army Medical Research Unit in Kenya (USAMRU-K) collected samples from the woman for testing at a laboratory.

"The KEMRI/CDC laboratory, part of CDC's Global Disease Detection (GDD) Regional Center in Nairobi, tested the samples for a number of infectious diseases, including Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya, Dengue, Ebola, Marburg, Yellow fever, O'nyong-nyong and Congo-Crimean Hemorrhagic fever," said Joel Montgomery, Director of the International Emerging Infections Program at GDD-Kenya. "The testing by KEMRI/CDC and KEMRI/USAMRU-K laboratories ruled out these diseases."

The three individuals who were being held in quarantine were released on Friday after the results came in, but it remains unclear what caused Muthoni's death. Some doctors suggested it may have been a severe ulcer in her stomach which caused the vomiting of blood.

The last known case of Ebola was reported earlier this year when a 12-year-old girl died in a town near the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The case sparked immediate fears of an epidemic, and the Kenyan Ministry of Health issued an alert to people living near the Ugandan border.

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