Immunisation should be given more attention

All stakeholders must consider establishing mobile immunisation clinics. [iStock]

Kenya's health sector must focus on immunisation campaigns to protect children from the growing risk of contracting resurgent diseases.

The threat of resurgence of lethal childhood diseases such as pneumonia, measles, diarrhoea, whooping cough, tuberculosis, meningitis and polio has become real in the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, as global health systems have shifted focus to fighting the virus at the expense of other critical vaccines. As a result of the pandemic, healthcare systems were overburdened and immunisation campaigns did not reach the people who needed them.