Ignore the church, get the tetanus vaccine

Tetanus vaccination: Jane Soi, a nurse at Uasin Gishu District Hospital in Eldoret town administers tetanus vaccine during the exercise going on countrywide on March 27, 2014. PHOTO| JARED NYATAYA

What you need to know:

  • She had been unable to conceive after the first baby. She confronted her husband for causing her sterility the moment some churches started condemning the vaccine.

  • Her husband got annoyed and became violent. She ran away and sought refuge in the chairperson’s house.

  • “How can the government scheme to sterilise Kenyan women without their consent?  We are going to mobilise all women to go to the streets; we will paralyse the whole country,” agitated the vice chairperson after the chairperson started off the chama meeting the next day.

It was a few minutes after midnight when the phone rang. Half asleep, I fumbled to pick it and in the process it dropped, its parts scattering on the floor.

Cursing whoever it was for interrupting those sweet hours of early sleep, I put on the lights, jumped out of bed and reassembled the phone. As soon as I switched it on, it started ringing again.

“Our member has just run to my house for help, we are in serious problems here,” came the voice. It was the chairperson of the chama, the women’s welfare group of which I am the only male member.

I suggested that she convene a chama meeting the next day to discuss whatever was bothering her.

“That is okay but we will not let it pass; we have rights and we cannot be used as guinea pigs. Tell the government to prepare for a court battle.”

The chairperson was talking about the controversy around the tetanus vaccine. A number of chama members had received the injection on medical advice only to hear from some church leaders that it was laced with a chemical to make them sterile. The chama member who had run to the chairperson’s house had accused her husband of colluding with the doctor to convince her to have the injection in her first pregnancy five years ago.

She had been unable to conceive after the first baby. She confronted her husband for causing her sterility the moment some churches started condemning the vaccine. Her husband got annoyed and became violent. She ran away and sought refuge in the chairperson’s house.

“How can the government scheme to sterilise Kenyan women without their consent?  We are going to mobilise all women to go to the streets; we will paralyse the whole country,” agitated the vice chairperson after the chairperson started off the chama meeting the next day.

SCIENTIFIC TRUTH BEHIND THE TETANUS VIRUS

I requested to be allowed to explain the scientific truth behind tetanus vaccinations so that members could make an informed decision.

“Please just make sure you are not protecting anybody on this issue,” said the chairperson, “if you fail to guide us appropriately we may reconsider your membership in this chama.”

Of course members know I am proud of my privileged status as a member, so they never hesitate to use a carrot and stick approach to win my allegiance to the group.

Tetunus is a serious bacterial disease that causes deaths of thousands of people annually. In 1990, tetanus caused 272,000 deaths worldwide. In 2002, it caused 213,000 deaths while in 2010, an estimated 61,000 people died. The decrease is attributed to more people getting  the tetanus vaccine. Deaths are more common in developing countries where immunisation levels have remained relatively low.

Over three quarters of tetanus deaths occur in babies a few days after birth.

The infection enters their bodies through the wound of the navel which remains fresh for a number of days after birth.

It is especially common where women deliver at home under unsterile conditions. In Kenya, home deliveries are still common, in fact in some counties over 75 per cent of women deliver at home, and their babies are at risk of being infected with tetanus.

To protect babies, the World Health Organisation (WHO) advises countries like Kenya with many unimmunised women and many home deliveries to use the high risk immunisation approach where a woman is given three injections of the vaccine within twelve months.

This helps women develop immunity which they pass to their newborn babies before birth, protecting the babies for the first six weeks of birth before they are given their own tetanus vaccine. Babies receive the vaccine at the age of six, 10 and 14 weeks. They are also supposed to get it at around the time of starting school, at entry into adolescence and in early adulthood.

Unfortunately this immunisation does not happen in full in most developing countries prompting the high risk vaccination approach advocated by WHO.  

The tetanus vaccine has no effect on the fertility of a woman. Such claims are unfounded and it is not clear whom they benefit since both the church and the medical fraternity would want to protect women and their children from dying from tetanus and other preventable diseases.

“But why haven’t I conceived for five years?” asked the member who started the crisis.

She had carried all the medical reports for treatments she had gone through for infertility. The medical reports showed that her fallopian tubes were blocked, a common cause of infertility in Kenya which has nothing to do with tetanus vaccination.

“So members, the choice is yours, if you want to protect your babies from tetanus deaths, get vaccinated,” I said in conclusion.

After a bout of silence, the chairperson thanked members for attending and asked them to go and educate other women and encourage them to be vaccinated.