This archive report was first published on 17 December 2019.
Published on December 17, 2019, Nyeri County in Kenya is grappling with a critical shortage of measles vaccine.
Parents taking their children to government hospitals for immunization are being turned away and told to return at a later date.
The shortage has led to a worrying situation where hospitals in the county are booking children for immunization, a practice that health experts say should not be the case.
"What we are doing in the wake of shortage is vaccination scheduling, which should not be the case, because we have a serious shortage of the doses," said Ms Joyce Maina, an Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) logistician.
Ms Maina explained that the county is clustering children to avoid wastage of the doses, as each bottle contains 10 doses and opening it when only one child is coming for vaccination would result in wastage.
The influx of children from neighboring counties of Laikipia and Kirinyaga, following a long standoff between workers and county bosses, has further exacerbated the situation.
Doctors in the county fear that the vaccine scheduling could result in missed opportunities, as a majority of the parents who were turned away might not return on their due date.
"As a result, we might experience measles outbreak which will be costly to the country," she said.
Additionally, Ms Maina said the county might miss out on World Bank funding due to failure to meet the required coverage.
