Nairobi — As a passionate advocate for caregivers and parents of children affected by polio in Machakos County, Awena Mwikali Mohammed's journey has been deeply personal.
Diagnosed with polio as a toddler, her world changed just as she was beginning to take her first steps.
The disease attacked her lower limbs, leaving her mother to wonder if she had missed the critical window for her primary immunization. Polio is a highly infectious but vaccine-preventable disease that most commonly affects children under the age of five and for more than 35.
However, her parents refused to let shame cloud their lives. Her mother and father openly discussed her condition with his colleagues, receiving life-changing advice: take Awena to the hospital for immediate care.
"I'm fortunate my father had health insurance and ensured I received the medical attention I needed," Awena i recalls. With proper treatment, including surgery and physiotherapy, she regained mobility with the aid of elbow crutches. Today, she continues to advocate for others, sharing her story to inspire hope and action.
The ever-smiling Awena says her mother was always supporting her by helping her go to school and encouraging her to study, something that pushed her out of self-pity into the firm I am hello and educated lady she has become.
She says her mother received insults from her extended family and neighbours when they discovered that her only daughter had been paralyzed by polio, especially when she would ask any of them to check on her or help her get to school.
Her mother would be forced to carry her on her back to school until when she could comfortably use some tiny elbow crutches and walk on her own.
"If my mother weren't strong, I probably would not have performed well in school, but because she believed in me, I was able to study at the university to prove a point to my neighbours that my mother never wasted her time to educate a 'cripple' as they frequently called me," she says.
Working in the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya office in Machakos County has opened the opportunity to sensitize women with children who were affected by polio not to hide them but to take them to schools and seek medical interventions.
In countries such as Kenya, volunteer community mobilizers such as Awena have been effective in gaining parents' trust by engaging regularly with families and communities to raise awareness for the safety and efficacy of the polio vaccine.
One way she advocates for empowerment is to have them form support groups where they can educate one another and propose ideas that can benefit them economically.
She has also been helping parents and caregivers register their children with the National Council of Persons with Disabilities so that they can benefit like other vulnerable people.
"When a mother is empowered, the child draws strength from her. They will not have self-pity and feel like a burden to their families. When parents are happy or sad, their children can feel it," she adds.
Awena speaks in the wake of the current polio campaign being run in the nine counties following a recent outbreak, with five confirmed cases in refugee camps in Garissa, Turkana, Nairobi Counties, and Mbale in Uganda.
According to UNICEF Kenya Health Specialist in charge of immunization, Dr Collins Tabu, polio is the leading cause of paralysis. It is close to being eradicated, and since 1988, children affected by polio have been reduced by over 99 percent.
"This has only been made possible through decades of concerted efforts, mainly through vaccination. To eliminate polio, every child in every household must be vaccinated.," he says.
He says that the decline in immunization coverage globally has resulted in addressing polio outbreaks.
According to him, the current outbreak in Kenya is driven by several factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in declining immunization coverage, climate change, drought and floods, and the displacement of thousands of children.
Additionally, he says population movement from the long-lasting conflicts in Somalia and South Sudan and congestion in the camps have also increased the risk.
According to UNICEF, the vaccination campaigns target the nine counties with 3.8 million children identified as high risk in Kiambu, Nairobi, Kajiado and Machakos, Garissa, Trans Nzoia, Turkana, Busia, and West Pokot with two rounds of vaccination.
Dr Tabu said UNICEF Kenya is committed to procuring all the vaccines to be used, the supplies, and the related logistics, including handling, distribution, and disposal, as well as supporting high community confidence and acceptance of the vaccines and combatting misinformation.
According to the World Health Organization, in 2023, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and other African countries experienced polio outbreaks even after Africa was declared polio-free in 2020.
Kenya successfully conducted three rounds of polio vaccination campaigns in ten counties.
WHO states that it will continue to support the Ministry of Health in strengthening routine immunization, cross-border coordination, high-quality supplementary immunization campaigns, and surveillance systems.
Harold Kipchumba, the national polio ambassador, called upon all parents and guardians with children below five years to ensure they get their polio vaccine and save their children from disability and even death if not well managed.
Rotary International has been working to eradicate call mom dad send yeah he's alive polio for more than 35 years. As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary International has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since the first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.
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According to District 9212 Past Chairperson Polio Plus Dr. David Githanga, Rotarians have been participating in vaccination exercises by talking to the communities about the importance of vaccines.
"You would not want to advocate for painkillers as compared to vaccines because if one is in pain, you will take a painkiller, but for vaccination, the biggest challenge is you have to convince one about a disease that is anticipated, especially where they do not see the consequences," says Dr. Githanga.
He says Rotary has been playing an important role in assuring the communities that the vaccines are safe and raising funds for the vaccination exercise.
Rotary members have contributed approximately 2.1 billion USD and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from polio.
According to the Rotary, if eradication efforts stopped today, within ten years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.
The average cost to fully protect a child against polio is 3 USD. In 2017, 430 million children were vaccinated in 39 countries, and 100 million USD was used to conduct polio surveillance worldwide.
