Why Nairobi slums are prone to high Covid infections

On Thursday, the Health ministry and other partners launched an accelerated Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign in Nairobi.

The ministry and the Nairobi Metropolitan Services Health Directorate have started community outreaches to ensure more people access the vaccines.

The campaign also seeks to debunk myths and misconceptions around Covid-19 vaccination and make the process much easier.

This comes after it emerged the county was recording more than 60 new infections daily amid raising cases in the country.

Currently, 48.9 per cent (1,492,877) of the population in Nairobi is fully vaccinated against a targeted population of 3,052,494 persons.

“We have recently witnessed an increase in reported cases of Covid-19 and the high population density in Nairobi poses the risk of propagation of another pandemic wave,” Health PS Susan Mochache said.

Nairobi has been on the ministry’s radar in the containment of the virus and in the efforts to slow down transmission, based on the fact that some of the estates are densely populated.

There is also the issue of whether measures put in place by the health ministry will be effective in the containment of the virus in slums and congested estates in Nairobi.

Kawangware, Eastleigh, Kibera and Kariobangi have always recorded the highest number of cases reported in Nairobi.

Apart from being densely populated, residents in informal settlements lack access to basic infrastructure and basic services like clean safe water.

For instance, whereas self-quarantine aims to restrict activities in a case where people who are not ill but may have been exposed to the infectious disease are separated from the rest, this measure might not work in such places.

Poverty is often a defining characteristic of informal settlements. Residents of these settlements are faced with vulnerabilities such as inadequate and unstable incomes.

Kawangware and Eastleigh are among the most congested, with data from the 2019 Kenya National Bureau of Statistics showing that Kawangware alone has 291,565 people.

“We have identified markets as one of the areas of transmission and we will deploy surveillance team to different zones,"Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said at the onset of the pandemic.

The aim, he said, was "to interact with the public, ensure social distancing and show people correct ways of putting on masks.” 

For Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi and one of the largest slums in Africa, the biggest defences against the spread of Covid-19 — social distancing and frequent hand washing — are nearly impossible.

Similarly, families stay in single rooms with some accommodating more than five people while residents share one toilet.

Despite these being hotspots for the virus, the government has always expressed concern that residents in these areas are not coming out in large numbers to be tested in the ongoing targeted mass testing.

The ministry, in partnership with NMS, the World Health Organization, USAID and Unicef, has launched an accelerated vaccination campaign that targets to reach at least 70 per cent of the city population with the lifesaving vaccines in the next six weeks.

"Despite these gains, there remains a large population that is unvaccinated. We need to reach an additional 1.5 million adults and to vaccinate 300,000 teenagers in Nairobi,” the PS said.

Nairobi comes second in the ranking of vaccination coverage after Nyeri,which has so far fully vaccinated 52.9 per cent of the targeted population.

The city however has administered the highest booster shots, with the figure standing at 116,873 as at Thursday.

(edited by Amol Awuor)