Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga—who swore himself in as president on Tuesday—claimed that at least 500,000 young girls and women may be infertile, following a tetanus vaccine administered by the government in 2014 and 2015.
The controversy began coming to a head in 2016 when Agriq-Quest Ltd, a Nairobi-based pharmaceutical company got in a dispute with Kenya’s Ministry of Health over their tetanus and polio vaccinations. A group of Catholic doctors originally made the accusations claiming that the vaccines may contain a hormone that is dangerous to young women and can cause potential sterilization.
As the Agence de Presse Africaine reported:
Odinga said girls and women aged between 14 and 49 from the fastest growing populations in the country will not have children, because of a state-sponsored sterilization exercise that was sold to the country as a tetanus vaccination.
The Catholic Church was ignored when it mounted a strong but lonely campaign against the mass tetanus vaccination, after it raised concerns about the safety of the vaccine that was being used, he said.
At the time, the Catholic Church in Kenya claimed that the tetanus vaccine used by the government of Kenya and UN agencies was contaminated with a hormone (hCG) that can cause miscarriages and render some women sterile.
“The Church’s position was
informed by what had happened in Mexico, Nicaragua and Philippines,
where the various governments together with WHO/UNICEF had conducted
similar campaigns using tetanus toxoid impregnated with beta human
chorionic gonadotropin (BhCG) that causes permanent infertility among
girls and women,” Odinga continued.
Odinga says they confirmed through analysis of samples that the vaccines used were tainted with the hormone.“Today, we can confirm to the country that the Catholic Church was right. Hundreds of thousands of our girls and women, aged between 14 and 49, from the fastest growing populations in the country will not have children, because of the state-sponsored sterilization that was sold to the country as tetanus vaccination,” he declared.
According to Business Dailly Africa, when Agriq-Quest conducted the tests on the vaccines, they found the Catholic Church’s suspicions to be correct.
As BDA reported, “The company’s results from tests carried out on the vials showed that the samples of the vaccines were contaminated as had been claimed by the Catholic Church and Agriq-Quest claimed the government wanted the results altered to show that they were fit to be administered to women and children.”
According to Odinga, as reported by APA, the government, for some mysterious reason, was hell-bent on misleading the country, while intentionally sterilizing Kenyan girls and women.
“The vaccines were a great crime committed against women. Women should choose when to have children and how to space them,” he said.
It is important to point out that the belief that tetanus vaccinations sterilizing citizens has been a long time controversy in Kenya and has been disproven prior to these claims.
Also, after the discussion came to a head, in spite of claims of tests showing contamination, UNICEF and the World Health Organization later said that the vaccines were safe and procured from a pre-qualified manufacturer.
However, according to Odinga, they accessed the analysis from four highly-regarded institutions, such as Agriq Quest Ltd, the Nairobi Hospital Laboratories, the University of Nairobi and Lancet Kenya.
License of industrial lab Agriq-Quest suspended
An industrial laboratory that was embroiled in controversy with the government last year has had its licence suspended.
The Kenya Accreditation Service (Kenas) announced that it suspended Agriq-Quest Ltd’s licence this month.
The
Nairobi-based company came into the limelight mid last year in a
dispute with the Ministry of Health over a controversial tetanus and
polio vaccination.
Speaking to the Business Daily
on phone, the company’s CEO, Fredrick Muthuri, confirmed that the
licence was suspended but complained that there was foul play in the
manner in which the suspension was carried out.
“We have disputed it. We filed for mitigation and met with the
appeals committee yesterday (Wednesday). We were given no reason at
all,” he said.
However, inside sources said the revocation was as a result of failure to meet the required laboratory operational standards.
The audit was carried out in December 2016, and the results released early this month.
A
former employee at Agriq-Quest who requested anonymity for fear of
victimisation claimed that the lab lacked capacity to carry out the
tests it was handling for its clients, including the Ministry of Health
and several industries such as Tullow Oil Plc and purified drinking
water manufacturers.
The employee, who is well
acquainted with lab procedures but resigned from the company towards the
end of 2016, said an audit of the lab was carried out by officials from
the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (Ilac) in
conjunction with Kenas.
Ilac is a global body that oversees accreditation internationally and Kenas is an associate member.
“Ilac
came to audit Kenas. They usually do this by picking one of the labs
that Kenas accredited and this time it happened that they picked Quest.
They did their audit together with someone from Kenas and found that the
lab is not compliant,” he said.
However, Mr Muthuri
said the lab carries out chemical and micro-biology tests whereas only a
portion of its analytical services were tested during the audit.
Efforts to reach Kenas for a comment were futile as our phone calls and email enquiries went unanswered.
Agriq-Quest,
through their lawyer Gitobu Imanyara, last year claimed that the
government had not paid them Sh13.8 million for tests performed on
controversial tetanus and polio vaccines.
They claimed
that the government’s decision was as a result of the company’s refusal
to doctor results in favour on the Ministry of Health which had jointly
asked for the analysis with the Catholic Church.
The
company’s results from tests carried out on the vials showed that the
samples of the vaccines were contaminated as had been claimed by the
Catholic Church and Agriq-Quest claimed the government wanted the
results altered to show that they were fit to be administered to women
and children.
“The debt is still there… we have had a
tug of war about that. Kenas is a government institution and we expected
them to act professionally,” Mr Muthuri said on Thursday.
