- About 10 million vaccines, some with expiry dates fast approaching, are lying in hospitals and stores countrywide.
- The country has so far received more than 24.6 million doses of vaccines and administered more than 13.7 million.
Image: File
Kenya needs to more than double its vaccination by June to meet the 70 per cent rate set by the World Health Organization.
The country has already vaccinated at least 5.8 million adults fully, according to the Ministry of Health.
This means the proportion of adults fully vaccinated is about 22 per cent.
The country has so far received more than 24.6 million doses of vaccines and administered more than 13.7 million.
About 10 million vaccines, some with expiry dates fast approaching, are lying in hospitals and stores countrywide.
WHO noted in Africa, the average full vaccination rate is about one per cent, which means Kenya is doing much better than most African countries.
“The world has finally heard our calls. Africa is now accessing the vaccines it has demanded for far too long. This is a dose of hope for this year,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, in a statement.
“However, a dependable pipeline must go hand in hand with operational funding to move doses out of depots and into people’s arms. WHO and partners are working with countries to urgently fix operational challenges including supporting health workers to speed up vaccine delivery, save lives and beat back this pandemic.”
Currently, six million people are vaccinated on average every week in Africa, and this number needs to increase to 36 million to reach the 70 per cent target agreed globally, WHO said.
“Twenty-one countries have fully vaccinated less than 10 per cent of their populations, while 16 have vaccinated less than 5 per cent and three have fully vaccinated less than 2 per cent,” WHO said in a statement.
WHO, and Unicef called for support to ensure vaccines are administered as quickly as possible upon arrival to avoid expired vaccines.
“Richer countries must not only ensure they are donating vaccine doses that have adequate shelf lives but also contribute funding for in-country operational costs,” said Mohamed Malick Fall, Unicef Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.
On Monday, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe also noted that unless uptake is accelerated, many doses of vaccines risk going to waste.
The vaccines deployment task force chair Willis Akhwale earlier said the shelf life of Johnson & Johnson vaccine is two years and can be stored in normal refrigerators.
“Even with the best of preservation facilities, these vaccines have a shelf life beyond which their expiry and disposal will be inevitable. This will be highly unconscionable considering the large number of unvaccinated Kenyans who need them,” Kagwe said.
“Unless we think and act fast on effective ways of accelerating this uptake, we risk rendering to waste huge public resources and those of our development partners that have been spent to secure the vaccines,” he added.