A a 21-year-old Kenyan medical student was quarantined at a Russian hospital for 11 days on suspicion that she was infected by the much dreaded Ebola virus. She has since been released and allowed to resume classes.
The student, Beatrice Mutave was said to have recorded a supposedly high body temperature of 37.2 degrees during a random test conducted on African students at the Volgograd Medical University, some 900 kilometres south of the Russian capital of Moscow.
The other examined students recorded body temperatures of 36 degrees which was considered normal by Russian medics. However, around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is considered normal globally. Nonetheless, Mutave's 37.2 degree body temperature alarmed the medics and on August 27 she was moved to a hospital about 200 kilometres from her college and kept in isolation. She was locked in a room with a toilet and tap water.
Her fellow students had to hire a taxi for a two-hour trip to visit and console the second-year medical student, although they were only permitted to talk to her through a window.
Mutave reportedly starved for two of the 11 days she was isolated as the nurses at the medical facility feared making any contact with her.
The student's mother is reported to have pleaded with the Kenyan ambassador to Russia to intervene, but she was told that that the hospital authorities were adamant that the young woman could not be released. She however said that they communicated with the daughter through SMS and WhatsApp.
The medical student went to Russia in 2012 and has never returned to Africa for a holiday, leading her mother to question why she had been detained for observation.
When contacted for comment, officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were reported to be in a meeting but one source said that Kenya's Ambassador to Russia, Paul Kurgat had prepared a dossier on the student's ordeal.
Mutave was released after being declared free of the Ebola virus which has claimed over 2,000 lives in West Africa, with the worst-hit countries being Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile in Kenya, health officials have tested and discredited a number of false alarms and suspected Ebola infection cases in the country.
A journalist returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo on an assignment was isolated on Wednesday last week after. He arrived in Kenya aboard the Kenya Airways Flight 550 from Lubumbashi and caused unwarranted panic after the flight attendants informed health ministry officials that the male passenger had vomited while the aircraft was in flight.
Another suspected infection case involved a 10-year-old Liberian student who was admitted to a Nakuru hospital with a fever and other symptoms. The boy alongside the nurse who first attended to him were immediately quarantined but later released after they tested negative for the virus.
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