Vaccination is essential in securing the lives of infants and other young children. This is why the government allocates substantial resources to ensure children receive life-saving jabs. And donors have been complementing these efforts.
Routine childhood vaccinations are provided free of charge through the National Vaccines and Immunisation Programmes in the public, private, faith-based, and Non-governmental Organisations health facilities. The immunisation protects infants against dangerous diseases such as tuberculosis, polio, rotavirus, pneumonia, and measles.
Support from international donors and partners such as Unicef and the World Health Organisation (WHO) ensures continuous stock. It is, therefore, shocking to learn that the country’s vaccine wastage is, in some instances, now five times more than the global average.
More than 6,489,212 doses of BCG, the vaccine that protects new-borns against tuberculosis, were wasted in the financial year ending June last year. According to Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu, the vaccines were issued to hospitals but never reached a child, yet the country faces shortages.
Problem of waste
The destruction of millions of doses is not a joke. The BCG wastage stood at 75 per cent, measles-rubella vaccine at 57 per cent, and yellow fever at 51 per cent.
The WHO allows countries receiving support from the Gavi Vaccine Alliance up to 15 per cent waste. More than six million doses of BCG vaccine were destroyed. A baby who does not receive the jab at birth is left without protection against tuberculosis.
A child who misses the measles-rubella vaccine is at risk from a contagious disease that WHO says killed 107,000 people globally in 2023, most of them children under the age of five years. The risks extend to other diseases like yellow fever.