[Read updates at bottom of the page]
Nairobi was abuzz last Saturday with rumours that the first case of swine flu (H1N1) had been detected or confirmed at the AAR clinic, based at Sarit Centre, which is one of the country's leadng shopping malls. The event behind the buzz was quickly dismissed by the authorities as either a "hoax", or a premature newsbreak concerning a case that in the end tested negative at the CDC-Kemri Labs, located in Nairobi's western suburbs.
Keyans seem generally to have accepted the government's explanation late last Saturday. Little did they know that that was the lull before the storm; that the government would get back to them in about 48 hours with a confirmed case -- not in Nairobi but in Kisumu City, far to the west of the country.
A 20-year old British student from the University of Nottingham College of Medicine, who, it turned out, was already in the country when the "hoax" broke -- having arrived in Nairobi on Sunday, June 21st, and having then travelled some 350 kilometers by bus to Kisumu -- ended up testing positive for swine flu last Sunday, June 28th. The government did not go public with the confirmed case until yesterday, Monday. The story hit the newspaper headlines today. Read more from:
(1) The Standard and,
(2) Daily Nation.
I do not detect any palpable panic in the general public: I was at the sarit Centre this morning. I walked some of the streets, downtown, this afternoon.
I think the Mexican experience in this matter strongly suggests that this absence of panic in Nairobi is not without reason -- or recent precedent. Perhaps, too, in a quaint sort of way, the Saturday "scare" numbed some of what might have been nerves today.
Still, it is reasonable to say that the Kenyan government has handled the case quite clumsily, since the student was a member of a visiting party from a part of the UK [East Midlands]well known to be a sort of swine flu "hot zone" right now, with at least 63 confirmed cases. The visiting party of medical students should have been quarantined (and should have themselves asked to be quarantined, on ethical grounds)as soon as they arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) more than a week ago.
There is another culprit here, let it be said. The British government was derelict here; it SHOULD HAVE ALERTED Kenya. Better still, it should have quarantined its own citizens before allowing them to travel to an obviously more vulnerable country -- both economically and in matters of preventive, and curative, medicine.
The British government will owe Kenyans one big one, should things get out of hand; and even now is obliged to join Kenya in a substantial way in preventing things from getting out of hand.
UPDATE:
1. July 1, 2009 story in The Standard: Click here
2. July 3, 2009: It is reported that confirmed cases of H1N1 in Kenya has risen to nine. Read: The Standard
