Ben Farmer Africa Correspondent

A Kenyan high court has temporarily blocked a plan for an American Ebola quarantine centre, hours before the facility had been due to open.

The plan to set up an isolation centre so that United States nationals returning from Congo could quarantine in Kenya rather than in America was opposed by health groups who feared it could import the deadly virus.

A high court judge on Thursday night blocked the centre until a legal challenge could be heard.

Campaign groups have accused the Kenyan government of endangering public health and compromising national sovereignty by agreeing the deal with Washington. The country’s main medical union had also threatened strike action.

“A conservatory order is hereby issued restraining the respondents from establishing... any Ebola exposure, quarantine, isolation or treatment facility in Kenya,” an order from Judge Patricia Nyaundi said. The next hearing is scheduled for June 2.

The outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo Ebola species is tearing through north eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after apparently having been spreading under the radar for several weeks, if not months.

Since the flare-up was confirmed in ‌mid-May, there have been more than 1,077 suspected ⁠and confirmed cases, including 246 deaths, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Donald Trump’s administration has vowed that it “cannot and will not allow” any cases of Ebola to enter the country, and unveiled the quarantine plan to isolate US aid workers and medics who had been tackling the epidemic.

The planned 50-bed facility in Kenya had been due to open on Friday at Kenya’s Laikipia air base, around 125 miles from Nairobi, with staff from the US Public Health Service.

Under the plan, it would accept Americans who had been exposed to the virus, but were not showing symptoms.

Patients who went on to develop symptoms would be sent for care in other countries outside the US, officials told Reuters.

The Katiba Institute, which campaigns for Kenya’s constitutional rights, had filed a petition against the plan, saying it raised “grave constitutional concerns regarding the rights to life, health, fair administrative action, public participation, and parliamentary oversight”.

Africa CDC meanwhile complained that donors were rolling back pledges to fund the operation to half the outbreak.

Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the African Union health body, said his organisation on Monday believed it had secured emergency funding pledges of nearly $500m.

By Thursday, that had fallen to $290m as donors changed their minds, to withdraw, or reduce donations.

Dr Kaseya said: “People are dying! How can we come and say: we commit x million dollars, ⁠and the next day they are calling me to say no, it was a mistake?”

“We know some big global health institutions are sitting with billions of dollars... How can you come to say: I want you to focus on this development program, and I have money ‌for that, but I don’t have money for Ebola?”

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, asked the European Union for stricter border controls because of the Ebola outbreak.

In a letter to EU leaders, she called for border management to be put on the agenda for the upcoming council meeting held from June 18.

“The aim is to call for, with full respect for national prerogatives in the field of health protection, enhanced coordination of border surveillance through common rules for managing direct and indirect arrivals from the affected areas,” the government wrote in a statement.

DRC’s health minister said the country was aiming to stop the outbreak in four to six months.

The outbreak is the 17th in DRC since the ebolavirus was first identified in what was then Zaire in 1976.

Roger Kamba said: “We have a timetable that we have set for ourselves with the experience we have and what we think, we think that in 4 to 6 months we should be able to stop this epidemic.

“How many cases of infection will we have, nobody can say today, how many deaths will we have, nobody can say, but what we can say is that we are putting in place the means to ensure that it is as low as possible.”

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