Uncertainty as children face threats of diseases

By ALI ABDI

In 1991, the Government with help of funds from the international community embarked on control of the killer tuberculosis ( TB).

In northern Kenya, it set up TB manyattas with help from the Netherlands in 1995. By the end of that year most districts with a high prevalence of the disease also benefited from the project under the National Leprosy and Tuberculosis Control Programme (NLTP).

These gains, however, risk being lost as it emerged that dozens of infants in the region had failed to get vaccinated against the disease in the last three months.

In Upper Eastern’s Isiolo and Marsabit counties and neighbouring Samburu it was confirmed that supply of the crucial Bacillus Camille Guerin ( BCG) vaccine had run out.

By mid this week, the hospitals had not received the vaccine with sources saying they had expected it last week.

An Isiolo resident who works for the Postal Corporation of Kenya in Meru town is among hundreds of parents whose children have been affected in Isiolo, Marsabit and Samburu counties.

The man, who declined to be identified, said he was advised by medics at Isiolo District Hospital to look for the vaccine in neighboring towns of Nanyuki and Meru.

 

No vaccines

“My son was born on May 4 and I was told the hospital had run short of the vaccine. I was advised to check for it in Nanyuki or Meru,” he told The Standard On Saturday. Medics now warn that the consequences could be devastating in nomadic areas where there’s little access to maternity and vaccination services.

But the Government denies these reports and maintains that fresh stocks of the vaccine were dispatched to the affected areas last week.