By John Toris 

Kenya has set an ambitious target to manufacture 60 percent of it's vaccine needs locally by the year 2040, according to health officials during the Day 2 of the 16th KASH Conference. Speaking during a press briefing at the Safari Park Hotel, the officials outlined plans to end the country's over-reliance on imported vaccines, a vulnerability brutally exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Kenneth Mwige, Director General of the Kenya Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat, told reporters that the COVID-19 pandemic taught Africa a painful lesson. He said Kenya is now determined never to be caught waiting for vaccines again.

"We had a wonderful time this morning discussing the future of vaccines and Kenya's and Africa's preparedness to manufacture our own vaccines to the extent of 60% of imports by the year 2040," Mwige announced.

He explained why vaccine independence is a matter of national survival. "We all learned a very serious lesson in 2019, 2020, and 2021 when the Covid-19 epidemic hit the world. That is when all the vulnerabilities were exposed. The countries that were able to get vaccines, the countries that were not able to get vaccines, and the countries that were rationed vaccines that is when we realized that we need to be self-independent on a matter as critical as vaccines."

Mwige reminded the room of the life-saving power of immunization. "The experts will tell you in the last 50 years, over 150 million lives have been saved by vaccines. This is not a joke because it affects child mortality, it affects the health system."

He highlighted the government's swift response after the pandemic: the creation of the Kenya BioVax Institute. "The point of Kenya BioVax is to first get vaccines from abroad, filling them and distributing them locally, but we want to progress and very quickly as well," he said. He expressed confidence that Kenya has the talent to succeed. "We have enough capacity to solve this problem."

Mwige said Kenya aims to become a regional leader in vaccine manufacturing, working with countries like Rwanda, Senegal, Egypt, and South Africa.

Also speaking at the briefing was Anna Mulele, a researcher from the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Program in Kilifi. She shared findings from a study on newborn babies in public hospitals. Her research revealed a worrying trend: preterm and low-birthweight babies are getting infected with bacteria that doctors cannot easily treat.

"We have used drugs to treat infections but then we have created the blame of AMR (antimicrobial resistance)," Mulele explained. "What we are finding is that these neonates are getting infected with bacteria that is actually very difficult for the doctors to treat, and there are very limited options for them."

She said one germ has caused infections at Kenyatta National Hospital, but the problem is not unique to Nairobi. "We don't really understand how this transmission is happening within the neonates and that is what we are trying to look at," she added.

Day 2 of the conference demonstrated that while Kenya aims high for future vaccine independence, researchers remain grounded, tackling urgent health threats facing the country's most vulnerable today.