US Will Send Ebola-Exposed Citizens to Kenya: Sources

Americans who may have been exposed to Ebola won't be flown back to the US for monitoring and treatment, but to Kenya instead, under a Trump administration plan described to the New York Times by three people familiar with it. The move breaks with past practice, when exposed US citizens, including health care workers, were repatriated to specialized biocontainment units at home. A White House spokesperson declined to comment. Dozens of Public Health Service officers are being prepared to deploy to a new US-run facility in Kenya that will quarantine and treat at-risk Americans, including government scientists and physicians, the sources say.

Earlier plans called for monitoring in Kenya but transferring symptomatic patients to Europe, but now treatment is also expected to happen there, with individual cases reviewed for possible transfer if more advanced care is needed. Public health experts warn the Kenyan setup is unlikely to match US facilities. "We know that their chances of getting through an Ebola infection would be higher in specialized units" in the US, said Dr. Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins. Dr. Craig Spencer, an Ebola survivor, called the decision "a dramatic abdication of what we owe our own." Sources also spoke with the Wall Street Journal about the planned facility, and that paper reports the Kenyan government still must sign off on the plan.