NAIROBI, Kenya — A Kenyan government vaccination campaign, sponsored and funded by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, amounted to a huge human rights violation, said the Kenyan bishops.
They said the government owes women and children an apology after test founds that the vaccine used during the nationwide tetanus campaign in 2014 was laced with beta human chorionic gonadotropin, or beta hCG, which can lead to miscarriages or sterility.
The report also said that “no further vaccination campaign should be undertaken in this country without an all-inclusive sampling and testing exercise done before, during and after the vaccination campaign.”
It said the Kenyan Ministry of Health must stop trusting foreign agencies, including the World Health Organization and UNICEF, to secure the safely of Kenyans.
During the vaccination campaign, the Kenyan bishops questioned why it was aimed at women between the ages of 14-59 and also why the government was conducting this campaign when the bishops were not aware of a nationwide tetanus crisis. They said they became suspicious because tetanus campaigns in places like Mexico, Nicaragua and Philippines also had been found to contain beta hCG.
The bishops noted that beta hCG occurs naturally during pregnancy but, when injected with a vaccine like tetanus, it becomes an antigen and stimulates antibodies, which can lead to miscarriages or sterility.
“When sterility is induced in any woman, without her knowledge and/or consent, it amounts to a monumental human rights abuse,” said a Feb. 13 statement signed by Bishop Paul Kariuki Njiru of Embu, head of the Catholic Health Commission of Kenya. “This is the highest violation of the sovereignty of any country, as it is a direct attack on the survival of a people and, therefore, national security.”
Kenyan doctors who conducted tests on vials of the vaccine were at the news conference at which the bishops released their reports, which the government has refused to acknowledge. The tests showed that 30 percent of the vials collected during the tetanus vaccination campaign contained Beta HCG.
