About 500,000 women may never bear children after being injected with a contaminated tetanus vaccine last year, Catholic Church claims in its final report on the controversial vaccination drive.
Their report cites tests by a joint committee of experts which found that 30 per cent of vials from the October vaccination campaign were laced with an anti-pregnancy hormone.
The committee was mandated by Parliament last year when the Church opposed the plans to vaccinate 2.3 million child-bearing women against tetanus.
Yesterday, head of catholic health commission Rev Paul Kariuki said the ministry has pulled out of the committee.
“Thirty per cent of the vials collected during the tetanus vaccination campaign sponsored and funded by WHO and Unicef contained HCG,” says the report, which has been produced only by the church-seconded experts.
HCG is the hormone that can be embedded in vaccines to trigger early miscarriage in women.
Rev Kariuki said three of the nine vials tested from last year’s vaccination campaign were confirmed to contain very high levels of the Beta HCG hormone.
“The beta quantity of Beta HCG is highly significant ranging from 24-37.5 per cent,” says Rev Kariuki.
Earlier, the joint committee reported that only three of 59 vials of the vaccine tested contained the HCG.
Rev Kariuki says 50 of the uninfected vials were collected by the ministry from the national vaccine store, and not from last year’s rapid tetanus campaign.
The church now wants the ministry and UN agencies involved to apologise to Kenyans and stop any further vaccination campaigns.
“It is both unethical and immoral for WHO and UNICEF to sponsor and fund and inhuman campaign like this in our country. They owe the defenseless, uninformed but trusting Kenyan children and women an apology,” Rev Kariuki said.
Head of Vaccine and Immunisation Services Dr Ephantus Maree said the vaccine used last year is the same routinely given to women in hospitals.
“We give the vaccine to women aged 14-49 years because they are in the child-bearing age. We began the campaigns in 2003, then in 2006, 2009 and this week’s will be the final one,” he told the Star last year.
India’s controversial scientist Dr Gursaran Prasad Talwar created the anti-HCG prototype vaccine, which can be can be attached to a carrier Tetanus Toxoid (TT) to prevent pregnancy.
The Journal of Cell Science & Therapy, Dr Talwar says this Family-planning vaccine, like other injectable family-planning methods, must be taken every three months and is therefore not permanent as claimed.
