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Kenya: Hospitals Now Run Out of TB Vaccine
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
1 May 2008
Posted to the web 1 May 2008
Elizabeth Mwai
Nairobi
AN acute shortage of a TB vaccine has put the lives of more than 100,000 newborn babies at risk.
Babies born in the past month have not been immunised against the killer disease.
They risk contracting TB as the Government grapples with a severe shortage of the vaccine - Bacille Calmette- Guerin (BCG) - The Standard has learnt.
The vaccine went out of stock a month ago, and the Government expects to replenish it in a fortnight.
This means that babies, especially those born in public hospitals, have no immunity against TB. Dr Tatu Kamau, the manager of the Kenya Expanded Programme on Immunisation (Kepi), yesterday confirmed there has been a shortage since last month.
"We have had some problems getting supplies into the country for the past one month," she said on the telephone.
A source at the Kenya Medical Supplies (Kemsa) disclosed that the last stocks were given out in July last year.
Kamau appealed to mothers whose babies missed out on the BCG jab to visit health centres in the next two weeks.
She said newborn babies could get the vaccine even when they are as old as five years.
"We assure them that we will have the vaccine at health centres," she added.
The Ministry of Health estimates that about 1.5 million women give birth annually. BCG is 80 per cent effective in preventing TB for 15 years, but its effect appears to vary according to geography.
The shortage comes a day after the Ministry of Public Health admitted that it had not been screening HIV patients for TB and vice versa.
More worrying is that about 50,000 people are unaware that they have TB, an airborne disease that kills about 20,000 people in Kenya a year.
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A source at Aga Khan Hospital, Nairobi, said the TB vaccine stocks would run out in two weeks' time.
At Gertrude Children's Hospital, an official said they had run out of the vaccine and had not acquired BCG from the Government Westlands branch.
Efforts to reach the Chief Pharmacist, Dr Fred Sioyi, were futile as he was said to be in a meeting.
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