Kenya to receive swine flu drugs

• Ministry asked WHO to secure 4 million doses for the country

Kenya will soon get four million doses of vaccines to fight swine flu.

This is a World Health Organisation response to a government request for the vaccines.

The Public Health and Sanitation director, Dr Shanaz Shariff, on Friday said the vaccine had been licensed in the United States and China and was safe for use in the country.

WHO is expected to procure the vaccines on behalf of the government. Dr Shariff said the global organisation had prioritised Kenya’s request and would soon make the drugs available.

According to him, there are limited stocks of the vaccine and governments cannot procure them on their own but have to go through WHO.

“Whenever the virus has been reported, we have run genotypic tests to see if it has changed but so far it has not,” Dr Shariff said on the sidelines of a Kenya Veterinary Association conference in Kisumu.

The virus had been declared a pandemic since it was far from being contained in the country, he added.

The family of a Malindi High School student who tested positive for swine flu has been quarantined in Mtangani village near Malindi Town.

The student was among four who tested positive for the disease on Thursday after blood samples of 20 suspected cases were brought to laboratories in Nairobi.

The 20 students were isolated after showing signs of the virus last weekend. Medical personnel then took blood samples from them for testing.

“Four students have tested positive for the disease. We have isolated them and are treating them,” said the district medical officer of health, Dr Ali Hussein. One student was allowed to go home to seek treatment early in the week “despite our instructions to have the students confined within the school compound”.

The student, who came from Mtangani, was said to have mingled with friends, parents and relatives, raising fears of the disease spreading.