Future immunisation campaigns could suffer serious setbacks if a case by a Nairobi company goes through.
The recently concluded campaign was hailed as being successful by the government but now Agriq Quest Ltd claims that the government declined to pay for laboratory tests because it wanted the results altered to show that the vaccines were fit to be administered to women and children.
Agriq Quest Ltd has threatened to sue the government for failing to pay Sh13.8 million for tests on the controversial tetanus and polio vaccines which it says were found to have been contaminated.
In a demand letter by Gitobu Imanyara Advocates, the company says that even after paying Sh5.7 million, the Ministry of Health failed to pick up final results of the tetanus vaccine analysis it had jointly asked for with the Catholic Church.
“Owing to the shocking findings of contamination of the vaccines, our client was orally advised to alter the results to indicate that they were safe to be administered,” reads the letter dated May 16 but which was allegedly obtained by the Nation on Thursday last week.
The Catholic Church caused a heated debate over the two vaccines between in 2014 claiming that the vaccines were laced with a hormone said to cause infertility in women.
The church’s Health Commission said the polio vaccine was laced with a hormone that, if injected in children, would affect their growth and reproduction abilities, while the tetanus jab had HCG, a hormone that they claimed could cause infertility in women.
This controversy forced the formation of a joint committee of experts from the government and the church and according to the letter, the joint committee hired Agriq Quest Ltd to test the vaccines.
On December 10, 2015, the laboratory tested the tetanus vaccine but “the Ministry of Health was not keen on receiving the laboratory report”.
Due to this, the final report of the analysis was to be presented to the Catholic Health Commission without any representation from the government.
The Nation says efforts to reach Dr Nicholas Muraguri who was the then Director of Medical Services and now the Principal Secretary for Health were futile.
Dr Muraguri is said to have submitted 56 samples of the polio vaccine to be used in the national campaign scheduled for April and May but which was pushed forward to August of the same year after the church raised concerns about the safety of the vaccine.
The publication says it could also not reach a representative of the Catholic Church.