Nyeri County grapples with shortage of measles vaccine

Nyeri County is grappling with a shortage of measles vaccine that is usually offered for free in government hospitals.

Parents taking their children for immunisation are being turned away and told to return at a later date.

Early last month, Nyeri received about 1,500 measles-rubella vaccines to be distributed across the 149 immunisation centres in the county.

Due to the shortage, nine-month-old babies in the county are being immunised against measles in clusters of 10.

Hospitals in the county have been booking children for immunisation which, according to health experts, should not be the case.

“What we are doing in the wake of a shortage is vaccination scheduling, which should [not] be the case, because we have a serious shortage of the doses,” said Ms Joyce Maina, an Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) logistician.

Ms Maina added that they are clustering the children to avoid wastage of the doses.

AVOIDING WASTAGE

“Each bottle contains 10 doses and, and if only one child is coming for vaccination and we open the bottle, all the nine doses will be obsolete, resulting in wastage and we cannot afford that,” she said.

She further noted that there is an influx of children who need the jab from neighbouring counties of Laikipia and Kirinyaga following the long standoff between the workers and the county bosses.

Doctors in the county now fear that the vaccine scheduling could result in missed opportunities as a majority of the parents who were turned away might not return on their due date.

“As a result, we might experience a measles outbreak which will be costly to the country,” she said.

Additionally, Ms Maina said the county might miss out on the World Bank funding due to failure to meet the required coverage.

The World Bank allocation depends on the performance of each county.