Dr. Victoria Kanana, Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Lead at the Kenya National Public Health Institute (NPHI) during an interview at Spice FM, Wednesday, August 12,2026. [Screengrab]
Kenya's readiness to respond to an Ebola outbreak has climbed to nearly 90 per cent, a health official has said, despite the country never recording a case of the disease.
Dr. Victoria Kanana, Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Lead at the Kenya National Public Health Institute (NPHI), said months of training, simulation exercises and surveillance upgrades have pushed the score up from 66 per cent in April.
She spoke on Wednesday, August 12, during an interview on Spice FM.
"That assessment gave us direction. We are very good at contact tracing, but in areas of infection prevention and control, specifically on how health workers can protect themselves, we were not doing well. Those are some of the areas we have been working on," she explained.
Kanana noted that the absence of an Ebola case in Kenya has, unusually, worked in the country's favour.
"We have not dealt with Ebola before, so our health workers are not sensitised to this," she said. "The lack of Ebola cases in Kenya is an advantage, as that has given us time to prepare," she added.
The government has focused special attention on 12 counties it considers high risk because of border proximity, population movement and location along major transport routes. They are Bungoma, Siaya, Kisumu, Homa Bay, Migori, Trans Nzoia, West Pokot, Turkana, Uasin Gishu, Nairobi and Mombasa.