Govt to introduce routine immunisation of children against Measles

The Government plans to introduce routine immunization of children against measles and rubella starting January 2017 in a programme that will focus on children between the age of 9 months and 18 months.

This comes as Health Principal Secretary Dr. Nicholas Muraguri said the just concluded immunization programme on children between 9 months and 14 years of age achieved 100 percent coverage.

The just concluded immunization campaign was conducted for one and a half weeks, reaching 19 million children.

The campaign, however, faced resistance from a section of religious institutions – a situation that threatened the success of a plan to eliminate the two diseases by the year 2030.

According to the Ministry of Health, the exercise is the largest immunization event in history.

The nationwide exercise was being conducted across all government health centres and selected churches and schools.

The campaign was a prerequisite for the introduction of the measles and rubella, MR vaccine into routine immunisation, which will take place early next year.

Last year, a similar campaign was marred by controversy after the Catholic Church issued a warning to its members not to get the tetanus jab, implying that it had adverse side effects including sterilization.

The Ministry of Health denied the allegations, declaring the jab safe.