National carrier, Kenya Airways has temporarily suspended its commercial flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone, the two West African countries hit by the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).
Kenya Airways CEO Titus Naikuni said in a statement released on Saturday that the suspension will be effective starting midnight Tuesday August 19, 2014 adding that the decision was based on the situation risk assessment by the Ministry of Health.
Mr Naikuni also said that those who had been booked on the suspended flights would get a full refund on tickets paid for prior to the suspension. However flights to Nigeria and Ghana have not been suspended.
Meanwhile, the government has also closed border entry points for individuals from Ebola hit countries except for health personnel and Kenyan citizens returning home.
Ebola has reportedly claimed 1,145 lives in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, as of August 13, 2014. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that it will take another six months to contain the disease outbreak.
The first Ebola cases were reported in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks, in Nzara, Sudan, and in Yambuku, in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The latter was in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease got its name.
The virus gets into the human population through close contact with blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals, it then spreads by human-human transmission. Infection mainly results from direct contact with the blood, secretions, or other bodily fluids of infected people. This happens through mucous membranes or broken skin. It can also result from indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids.
Before declaring one to be suffering from Ebola, other disease that have symptoms similar to it should first be tested and ruled out. These include malaria, typhoid fever, cholera, plague, relapsing fever, meningitis, hepatitis and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.
According to WHO, there has not been any safe cure or vaccine for Ebola so far, discrediting rumors that there was a cure for the virus. Two Nigerians reportedly died after drinking salt water that was rumoured to protect against infection by the virus.
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