- The second round of vaccination will run from June 19 to 23
- Six cases of mutated poliovirus were detected in Garrisa and Mombasa last December and in January
Image: CHARLENE MALWA
At least 2.6 million were inoculated in the just-ended polio vaccination campaign.
The Ministry of Health had targeted 3.4 million children under five years in 13 high-risk counties.
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe has advised parents whose children missed the vaccine to visit any government health facility where regular immunisation continues.
“We remain at high risk of imported polio infections due to challenges of vaccination in neighbouring countries,” he said.
The exercise ended Wednesday evening.
Kenya is conducting two rounds of immunisation after the latest outbreak of vaccine-derived polio.
The second round of vaccination will run from June 19 to 23.
Six cases of mutated poliovirus were detected in Garrisa and Mombasa last December and in January.
Three cases were children who had just arrived from Somalia at the Dadaab refugee camp. Their stool was tested and found to have the mutated poliovirus.
A mutated virus was also found in a sewage sample from Garissa, while two samples of sewage collected in Mombasa were found to have a similar virus.
“According to World Health Organization guidelines, this constitutes a polio outbreak and immediate response vaccination must be undertaken in all high-risk counties to stem further spread of the virus,” Kagwe said on Wednesday in Nairobi’s Kibra constituency at the end of the campaign.
Last week, the WHO faulted Kenya for not revealing the outbreak immediately and declaring a national emergency as required by the International Health Regulations.
The WHO said the last of these cases was confirmed on January 25.
“The committee noted that Kenya and Tajikistan had not declared the new outbreaks as national emergency and requested the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to have discussions with these countries about the importance of making such a declaration, notwithstanding the reported vigorous country responses,” the WHO's IHR Committee for Polio says in a statement.
The WHO said someone at the level of a head of state should have declared a national emergency.
However, a Ministry of Health official told the Star the immediate reporting is for wild poliovirus, which has already been eradicated in Africa.
“We are in the process of reporting the current cases officially, but it’s a lengthy process. The samples also had to go through confirmatory tests,” he said.
All the cases are importations from Somalia, where vaccination rates are extremely low.
The WHO said they were all circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2, which is common in under-vaccinated communities in Somalia.
The solution is widespread vaccination to break any possible transmission.
Head of surveillance and epidemic response at the ministry Dr Emmanuel Okunga, said the recent cases were detected because of Kenya’s efficient surveillance system.
The last case of mutated poliovirus was from a sewage sample collected in Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate in 2018.
Kenya last reported wild polio in 2013 when an outbreak in Somalia led to an importation of 14 cases to the country.
Edited by Josephine M. Mayuya