Two Ebola cases have been confirmed in Kenya, five months after the Democratic Republic of Congo's outbreak was declared, exposing weaknesses in efforts to track the virus, experts have said.
A 40-year-old Kenyan man who had been living in the DRC and had felt unwell for a month travelled by road to Kampala, Uganda, and then flew to Nairobi, where he was diagnosed with Ebola and died on 5 October. This week, Kenya's health ministry confirmed a second case: a 39-year-old close relative of the first, who was already in quarantine when he fell ill on Tuesday.
Experts told The Independent that around a third of cases go undetected until after death, and about half of confirmed cases have no known epidemiological link, meaning it is not known where the person was infected or by whom. Contact tracing remains below target at under 80 per cent, according to Trish Newport, emergency programme manager for Médecins Sans Frontières in the DRC, who said identifying contacts in the first place remains one of the biggest problems.
"The whole process of listing contacts needs to improve," Ms Newport said, adding that mapping the movements of people with an infection "requires a lot of resources, and it isn't being done today."
The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no treatment or cure. Response efforts have been hampered by widespread cuts to international aid. US emergency assistance to the DRC fell from $805 million in 2024 to $373 million in 2025, and the World Health Organization said in June it had less than half the funding it needed for the Ebola response. UNICEF said this month it had a $73.3 million funding gap, about 65 per cent of what it believes is needed, as more than 1,900 children had been orphaned or separated from their families.
The epidemic, the second deadliest on record, has killed 4,300 and infected at least 9,000 people since it was declared in mid-May. The WHO has warned that without significant improvements in contact tracing, the outbreak could see continued undetected transmission, late diagnoses, geographically expanding clusters and further cross-border spread.