Kenyans protest U.S. Ebola quarantine plan at military base

Hundreds of Kenyans took to the streets in Nanyuki to oppose a U.S.-backed Ebola quarantine site at Laikipia Air Base, arguing that Kenya was being asked to absorb the risk while the Americans kept the benefit. The planned 50-bed quarantine or isolation unit, about 150 miles north of Nairobi, has become a flashpoint over sovereignty, public health and who gets to decide what happens on Kenyan soil.

The anger has sharpened because the U.S. government said Americans exposed to Ebola would not be allowed back home and would instead be quarantined in Kenya. Protesters said that arrangement amounts to a dangerous double standard, especially as Ebola continues to alarm the region after the World Health Organization declared outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on May 17, 2026. Kenya’s health authorities have said no Ebola case has been reported in the country, while border, airport and seaport screening has been intensified and preparedness measures have been activated.

The dispute escalated into a legal fight when Kenya’s High Court first suspended the plan on May 28, 2026. On June 2, the court extended that suspension for three more weeks and ordered the government to disclose agreements and operational protocols tied to the facility, with the next hearing set for June 23. Civil society groups, including the Law Society of Kenya, challenged the constitutionality of the project, while Reuters reported that the court also barred the government from taking further steps to build or operate the site before the case is resolved.

The protests turned deadly on June 1, when witnesses and reporters said police opened fire after demonstrators marched toward the air base. Two people were killed and others were injured, and local health officials said the bodies of two men were taken to Nanyuki Teaching and Referral Hospital. Demonstrators burned barricades and waved Kenyan flags as they pushed back against a project they said would expose civilians in Laikipia County to a disease associated with West Africa-style emergency containment and global fear.

The controversy has also exposed a widening gap between Nairobi and Washington. Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale told lawmakers the site would serve multiple users, including the Kenya Defence Forces, and said it fit within a bilateral health cooperation framework signed in December 2015. U.S. officials rejected that link, saying the planning only began around the time the Ebola outbreak was declared in mid-May. Even as the courts intervened, reports said U.S. military flights kept landing at the base with medical equipment, doctors, engineers, laboratory experts and construction workers. Kenya says it has trained more than 800 health workers and identified response teams in 29 counties, but the backlash shows how quickly crisis logistics can collapse when diplomacy ignores domestic politics.