At the Ugandan border crossing at Gatuna, the Rwandan government has erected a booth to prevent the spread of Ebola.
Anyone who enters the country illegally is required to have their temperature monitored, and if they exhibit any symptoms, they are quarantined in a room until they can be sent to the hospital.
“This is where we receive people who come from Uganda and who show symptoms of Ebola. We try to find out as much as possible about their background before they arrive in Rwanda, whether they have been a contact case or not. Afterwards, they are transferred to the hospital in Byumba”, said Consolée Niwemahoro, member of the outbreak prevention unit.
At least 60 people displayed possible Ebola symptoms, such as fever, but no one proved positive with the illness following testing and isolation.
John Gilbert, a Kenyan citizen crossing the border said “I have very little information about Ebola, because where I come from, people are not scared of Ebola. You hear that it exists in some parts of Uganda, but not at the Bouzia border. So me passing through, I was comfortable since I did some outskirts part of Uganda not even passing through. So we are not even scared. It’s just something I came to notice that ‘okay there is Ebola’ when I came to this border”.
“I hope we get over this soon. It’s scary, but what can we do? We have to keep looking for work and you have to crossing borders and you have to believe that you will be okay at end of the day”, he said.
On September 20th, Uganda reported an outbreak of the Sudanese type of Ebola. The epicentre is a rural area called Mubede in central Uganda, which is located around 150 kilometres from Kampala, the country’s capital.
Meanwhile, 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.