In a move that has sent shockwaves through the corridors of global health diplomacy, Kenya has unceremoniously halted the construction of a US-backed Ebola quarantine centre. The facility, a gleaming monument to transatlantic cooperation, was supposed to rise from the dusty plains of Nakuru like a phoenix of pestilence prevention. Instead, it now sits in bureaucratic limbo, a concrete testament to the art of diplomatic foot-dragging.
Let us first appreciate the sheer chutzpah of this decision. Here we have a nation that, by all accounts, should be grateful for any crumb of Western medical largesse. But no, the Kenyan government has looked the gift horse in the mouth, found its teeth excessively American, and decided to pull the plug. The official reason? Some mumbo-jumbo about 'regulatory compliance' and 'indigenous health sovereignty.' In plain English: we don't want your Yankee plague hut on our soil.
This, of course, has sparked a frenzy of hand-wringing among the global health set. The World Health Organisation is probably having a collective aneurysm. The US State Department is no doubt drafting sternly worded cables. And the tabloids? They're having a field day with headlines screaming 'Ebola Gateway Closed!' as if Kenya has done nothing less than open the gates of hell.
But let us, for a moment, don the cap of the cynical satirist. Is this not the most exquisitely African response to a thoroughly Western problem? The Americans sweep in with their test tubes and hazmat suits, ready to save the continent from itself. And what does Africa do? It says, 'Thank you, but no thank you. We'd rather be eaten by the virus than by your bureaucracy.'
This is not to minimise the very real threat of Ebola, a disease that makes the common cold look like a pleasant tickle. But there is something deliciously ironic about a nation that cannot keep its own taps running rejecting a state-of-the-art quarantine facility. Perhaps they plan to fight the fever with pure national pride. It worked for the Mau Mau, didn't it?
What truly rankles, however, is the sheer audacity of the timing. We are barely months removed from a global pandemic that exposed every chink in the world's biomedical armour. And now Kenya has the brazenness to tell Uncle Sam to keep his petri dishes to himself. It is either a stroke of genius or a spectacular own goal. I suspect the latter, but I admire the former.
The real question is: who benefits? Not the poor souls in the slums of Nairobi, who will now have to rely on the government's 'robust' healthcare system, a system so well-oiled it can barely produce a diagnosis for a common cold. The only winners here are the conspiracy theorists, who now have fresh evidence that the West is trying to infect Africa with designer superbugs.
And so we are left with a paradox: a quarantine centre that could save lives but is instead condemned to be a ghost building. The irony is so thick you could slice it with a scalpel. But perhaps that's the point. In the theatre of international relations, sometimes the best performance is the one that never takes the stage.
Biff Thistlethwaite, signing off from the edge of reason. The gin is warm, but the indignation is ice cold.
