NASA principals Raila Odinga (left) and Moses Wetangula address the media on September 11 at their Capitol Hill Headquarters on the tetanus vaccine injection which they claimed has a fertility-altering hormone. [Photo: standardmedia.co.ke]
Health CS Cleopa Mailu has dismissed NASA leader Raila Odinga's allegations that the government-administered tetanus vaccine secretly laced with a hormone to cause miscarriage and infertility in women.
Mailu said that the issue was only a major concern in its initial stages of implementation but was swiftly resolved, the Star reports.
"There were challenges in 2013-14 on how immunisation should be carried out. The onset was for everybody to feel comfortable with mass vaccination. In 2014, we agreed to have a technical working group that once mass vaccine comes, we subject vaccination to test, not because the source is not known," said Mailu on Tuesday as quoted by the Star.
He said revisiting the unresolved controversial topic 'was ill-advised, untimely and unnecessary'.
The CS was speaking during the annual general meeting and health conference for the Catholic Health Commission of Kenya.
Last month, Raila said the government deliberately sterilised thousands of women between ages 14-49 where investigations by 'four credible institutions' on the vaccine revealed it had high amounts of an anti-pregnancy hormone meant to render women and girls sterile.
Raila said the Catholic Church was right in opposing the jab.
Catholic Cardinal John Njue had urged Kenyans to reject the vaccine, claiming it had been laced with an antigen that could cause sterility in women.