The European Union said on Monday that it has provided 12 million shillings in humanitarian money to Kenya to aid in the country’s proactive response to the spread of the Ebola virus.
According to the EU, the financing would assist the Kenya Red Cross Society in offering much needed training and awareness-raising workshops to populations at risk, particularly along the border towns between Uganda and Kenya.
“The outbreak of the Ebola disease in Uganda poses a significant threat to Kenya given the regular mass travel between the two countries and the vast socio-economic ties the two countries share,” it said in a statement issued in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.
The Kenya Red Cross Society will train volunteers in community-based surveillance for early Ebola detection and eventual referral of positive patients to medical facilities, according to the EU.
The Kenya Red Cross ambulance drivers will also receive training on how to manage and move questionable situations as well as how to be safe.
The project, according to the EU, would last three months and target more than 565,000 people in border towns between Uganda and Kenya, communities with significant socioeconomic ties to Uganda, as well as people living near the transport route from Uganda to Kenya.
On September 20, Uganda declared that the Mubende district in its center had an Ebola outbreak.
According to data from the Ministry of Health released on October 20, there have been 27 fatalities and 65 confirmed cases of the Ebola virus-Sudan strain in Uganda.