- The ministry on Tuesday said the three-round vaccination campaign seeks to reach 7.4 million children under five years.
- This is after six poliovirus cases were detected among children in the Hagadera Refugee Camp in Garissa.
Image: UNICEF
The Ministry of Health has identified 10 counties with the highest risk of polio transmission as the focal points of the emergency polio vaccination campaign from Thursday.
The 10 counties include Nairobi, Kiambu, Kajiado, Garissa, Kitui, Machakos, Tana River, Lamu, Wajir, and Mandera.
The ministry on Tuesday said the three-round vaccination campaign seeks to reach 7.4 million children under five years and will be launched at Ruiru Level 4 Hospital in Kiambu.
The first round of the campaign is scheduled from Thursday to Monday, August 28 with an initial focus on Kiambu, Nairobi, Kajiado, and Garissa.
The ministry targets to vaccinate approximately 1.8 million children in the four counties.
"Subsequently, the second and third rounds will target 2.8 million children each," Public Health PS Mary Muthoni said.
"They will be conducted between September and October 2023 in 10 counties of Kiambu, Nairobi, Kajiado, Garissa, Lamu, Tana River, Wajir, Mandera, Kitui, and Machakos counties."
This is after six poliovirus cases were detected among children in the Hagadera Refugee Camp in Garissa.
The six cases were picked through routine surveillance activities where healthcare workers identified the cases by analysing stool samples taken from the affected children and subsequently sent to Kenya Medical Research Institute.
According to the ministry, the samples tested positive for the presence of poliovirus.
"Further examinations conducted in Atlanta, USA, confirmed the virus's similarity to the strain responsible for an outbreak in a neighbouring country," Muthoni said.
In 1988, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution for the worldwide eradication of polio, marking the launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, spearheaded by national governments, WHO, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF.
Kenya's resolute determination has resulted in a remarkable achievement of a decade of polio-free status.
Despite the achievements, the ministry has acknowledged that Kenya is not immune to the risks of polio resurgence, especially in the face of international spread.
The World Health Organisation has previously warned that the risk of vaccine-derived polio in Kenya remains high.
“WHO assesses the overall risk at the national level to be high due to the overcrowded living conditions in the refugee camp, high rate of malnutrition, poor water and sanitation facilities, mass and frequent population movements with Somalia,” WHO said.
It also noted there was an influx of new arrivals to the refugee camp.
Other factors were the late identification of the newly arrived children and the high prevalence of unvaccinated dose children among the new arrivals.
The Kenyan outbreak was confirmed to be circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2), which is common around the world in under-vaccinated communities.
The vaccine-derived poliovirus is a mutated strain of the poliovirus originally present in the oral polio vaccine.
In rare instances, the virus can genetically change and spread in under-immunised communities with poor hygiene and sanitation.