Saving The Children

Scientists, government officials and ordinary citizens have a strong message for Kenyans: immunise your children, and protect them from contracting a potentially deadly and utterly preventable disease.

- Joy Wanja Muraya

Last month (May), Kenya’s Ministry of Health launched a polio awareness campaign in Nairobi. The goal? To alert people to the fact that polio, a crippling and deadly disease, was back, and that all children under the age of five should be immunised. The target was 800,000 kids. A big number, but imagine a future in which 800,000 kids contract polio just because they did not receive the lifesaving vaccination offered to them …

Senator Harold Kipchumba, 55, knows what it’s like to live with polio. When he was four years old, he contracted the disease. It did not kill him, but it severely affected his mobility, and he needs crutches to get about. Today, he is a senator and a fervent United Nations polio immunisation ambassador.

‘If I had been immunised as a child, I would not be walking using crutches,’ Harold says. ‘Polio is a killer disease and I am glad to be alive. The best part of being a polio ambassador is that I speak to parents and guardians urging them to allow their children to be given the life-saving vaccines.’ Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by the polio virus, which mainly affects young children. The virus is spread from person to person mainly through ingestion of faecal matter from an infected person.

Harold is passionate about getting the message across.