Ensure vaccines are readily available

It is a matter of public knowledge that the state of healthcare in the country is wanting. There is no single day that goes by without doctors and nurses going on strike in one county or another. Often, the strikes run into weeks and as a result, many ailing citizens who would have been alive today to aid in nation building are not with us.

The public health system is not what it should be. Consequently, many disillusioned citizens seek medical attention in private facilities some of which, by themselves, pose even greater danger.

This arises from the knack of many quack doctors to circumvent the licensing and vetting system to set up illegal clinics that operate outside safety standards. Too often, the public gets to know about such illegal clinics when something goes seriously wrong.

Revelations that Sh160 million earmarked for the purchase of vaccines have been misappropriated are disturbing. Many public hospitals are said to have been operating without requisite vaccines for the last four years.

Lack of vaccines puts the lives on thousands of new born babies at risk of contracting immunisable diseases like polio, tuberculosis, measles and Tetanus. While vaccines are given free of charge in public hospitals, private hospitals give them at a fee. This disadvantages the poor.

Indeed, while polio should have been eliminated years back, there were reports of two new cases in 2013 at the Dadaab Refugee Camp. Thereafter, the government intensified its efforts to vaccinate as many children as possible, but this campaign met some resistance from the Catholic Church that claimed the vaccines had been tempered with.

There is urgent need to investigate these claims and punish those found culpable. No Kenyan child should die of a disease that immunization in the first nine months following birth would have stopped.

The government should not only be effective in supplying vaccines to hospitals, it must ensure stocks are readily available.