Kenya's government has confirmed it will proceed with a US-funded Ebola quarantine and treatment centre at Laikipia Air Base, roughly 200 kilometres north of Nairobi, even as protests over the project left at least two people dead and a Kenyan court issued a temporary blocking order. President William Ruto defended the decision, calling it "the right thing," while Health Minister Aden Duale told parliament that the facility would not be halted and that the government would "not consult citizens" on its establishment, citing the urgency of an epidemic.

The 50-bed facility is being built at a US air force base near Nanyuki, a town in central Kenya, and was originally intended to quarantine Americans arriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is battling a major Ebola outbreak. Kenyan officials have sought to reframe the centre as serving both Kenyan and American nationals, with Duale insisting it is "not exclusive" to US citizens. The centre falls under a 2015 bilateral agreement as part of the US Biological Threat Reduction Program. Kenya itself has recorded no Ebola cases despite widespread screening of arrivals, though neighbouring Uganda has registered 15 cases and one death.

The project has drawn sharp criticism from public health experts and former US officials. A group of senior former CDC leaders, including Daniel Jernigan, who oversaw the agency's Ebola response during the 2014–15 west African epidemic, wrote to Congress warning that the plan raises "profound clinical, ethical, operational and legal concerns." Critics point out that the United States already maintains world-class biocontainment facilities — in Atlanta, Bethesda, Omaha and New York — that were used safely during the 2014 outbreak. They argue that a field hospital in Kenya offers inferior care, and that patients needing advanced treatment would still need to be evacuated, in this case to as-yet-unidentified hospitals in Europe. Questions also remain unanswered about whether the facility would cover non-Ebola medical emergencies, and whether all Americans on the ground or only those with high-risk exposures would be required to use it.

The political and ethical dimensions of the decision have added to public anger in Kenya. Many residents and commentators have described the arrangement as carrying colonial undertones — a foreign power using Kenyan territory to manage risks it is unwilling to take on at home. Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the policy in stark terms, saying the US "will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States," a stance that infectious disease specialists say is both scientifically questionable and diplomatically damaging. Experts warn that travel restrictions of this kind have historically failed to contain outbreaks, and that withdrawing from international health cooperation — including the World Health Organization — will have lasting consequences for global disease preparedness.