A day after reports emerged that participants of a conference at Weston Hotel had tested positive for Cholera, Health Cabinet Secretary Cleopa Mailu has clarified that the participants had suffered food poisoning and not cholera as earlier reported.
Speaking to a local radio station, Mailu confirmed that 35 tests had so far been done with almost all turning out negative for the disease.
He said that “the signs and symptoms do not meet the classical case definition of cholera.”
Many guests who had been booked at the Hotel were taken to hospital displaying cholera-like symptoms, sparking a health scare.
He disclosed that the Department of Disease Surveillance and the National Public Health Laboratories would conduct further tests.
Health ministry officials have also intensified the search for the source of the infection among the patients as well as the hotel.
More than 500 people had converged at the Hotel to attend a Lung Health Conference.
On Thursday, Nairobi County Health Executive Bernard Muia had indicated that three cholera cases had been identified among participants who were attending the conference at Weston Hotel.
Last month, six people died of cholera after attending a wedding in Karen, prompting the Nairobi County Government to issue a cholera alert.
