The Kenyan Bishops’ Conference and the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association (KCDA) have alleged that immunisation is being used as a cloak for covert contraception. This is their second foray into primary health care; in late 2014 they warned women against tetanus vaccination, followed in July 2015 by a boycott of oral polio vaccination (OPV) of children.
Tetanus and polio are grave preventable diseases and risk become enhanced when conflict interferes with immunisation schedules. No new polio cases were reported in Africa last year, but the wild virus is still abroad, and around 0.5 million Kenyan children are reckoned to be susceptible, due to missed or ineffective vaccination. Maternal and neonatal tetanus, commonly associated with home delivery in rural areas, is annually responsible for approximately 100,000 deaths in Africa. Since 20 per cent of Kenyan adults were unprotected against tetanus, Kenya was included in an intensive UNICEF vaccination programme targeting women of childbearing age.
The Bishops’ Conference queried why men were excluded and claimed that the vaccine supplied by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF was “spiked” or “laced” (both emotive terms were used) with a contraceptive vaccine derived from Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin b-HCG. Maybe the Bishops’ Conference and KCDA misinterpreted the observation by Gursaran Talwar and colleagues, researchers at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi, India, that tetanus toxoid augments the contraceptive action of b-HCG, although the researchers concluded that contraceptive vaccine was presently too unpredictable for use in humans. Following critical media reaction, the bishops and KCDA accepted that tetanus vaccine was uncontaminated, though the impact of their intervention is uncertain.
Their new target is the UNICEF programme to eliminate polio (starting this month), and they have asserted that the vaccine, OPV, is “contaminated” with an unspecified oestrogen which will inhibit growth and fertility. Whereas live vaccine OPV, cultured in monkey kidney, may contain minute amounts of oestrogen, this is insufficient for any physiological effect. The Bishops’ Conference requested re-testing of OPV, and then challenged the results reported by WHO/UNICEF and government laboratories. The stand-off is recorded in minutes of the Immunisation Stake-holders’ meeting on 29 July, which they failed to attend. Similar ill-founded allegations, that vaccines were used as a vehicle for covert population control, previously surfaced in Mexico, Tanzania, Nicaragua, and led to the murder of Nigerian and Pakistani health workers.
Why this protracted distrust? While scientific findings may be misconstrued, there is an obvious explanation for the use of different doses and schedules in adults compared with infants. Different vaccines and schedules may be used in Western countries e.g. OPV was recently replaced in the UK by injected inactive PV, but this was explained by the miniscule risk of imported infection.
Finally, what about miscommunication? WHO’s trumpeted “decade of vaccines” and global assembly (2012) preceded the current vaccination action campaign. Their pledge to reach “every district”, ensuring dialogue with “civil society”, which includes faith-based health providers, was probably not achieved, since early protest blogs from the Bishops’ Conference and KCDA indicate that procedural changes were not explained to faith-based health providers.
Let everyone remember to put the welfare of children first.
Maureen Duggan was a paediatrician in Mbarara, Uganda, and College of Medicine, Malawi
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The Kenyan bishops are well within their rights as responsible to their people to query the kind of contamination in the two vaccines in question. I am sure the doctors association are quite familiar with the 1993 report of The British Medical Bulletin, volume 49, 1993 “Contraceptive Vaccines”.
Dr. Duggan has not cited any real-time clinical findings to dispel the bishops' doubts about contraceptive contamination in either OPV; or b-HCG.
Is this a case of using the Africans as an indirect means for the "production of generalisable knowledge" of contraceptive vaccines?
If so, that is not ethical.
We certainly also need to hear the side of the Bishops.
cont...
It is against this body of evidence that the Kenyan Bishops rightly advised their faithful to stay away from this specific tetanus programme.
Not only is hCG wholly unrelated to vaccine production or delivery and can not find its way into a vaccine matrix without intent, when administered at the unusual periodicity seen in Mexico, etc and now Kenya this vaccine results specifically in antibody production against both tetanus and hCG, the upshot being developed ‘resistance’ to both live tetanus AND pregnancy. The outcomes of the WHO vaccination programmes in Mexico etc were long lasting to permanent, including multiple miscarriages and sterility in women who received the vaccine.
Irrespective of ones views on birth control, this WHO/UNICEF approach in the third world should appal every Catholic instinct and sensibility.
I think the Africans have a pretty good handle on white duplicity. To explain the actual case from ground zero:
Kenya has an existing national tetanus vaccination program fully endorsed by the Church and medical profession. It was in fact the Catholic Doctors Association of Kenya that advised the Bishops conference. Their concerns related to a new batch of vaccines with a different name and profile delivered and administered without explanation starting October 2013 and October 2014 by the WHO/UNICEF in a mass vaccination program aimed at women of child bearing age (14-49). Both the number of inoculations and delivery interval was suspicious enough to prompt doctors to dispatch samples for independent analysis in South Africa. Results confirmed the inclusion of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) in the tetanus vaccine, a hormone otherwise associated with pregnancy. Far from being a conspiracy theory, The British Medical Bulletin, volume 49, 1993 “Contraceptive Vaccines” (see here http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/1.toc) and research published elsewhere describe methods of sterilisation using specifically hCG in association with tetanus and other vaccines. Further, the Kenyan batch had a similar profile to the WHO mass vaccination programmes aimed at the same demographic in Mexico in 1993 and Nicaragua and Philippines in 1994. The consequences of those programmes are incontestable, having undergone rigorous analysis and upheld in court. cont.
Where are these bishops being educated? Why are they so preoccupied with sex? I despair! Children are the result of sexual activity but once they arrive the bishops seem to think of them as purely souls and don't care about their poor little bodies at all. Do they want them to suffer from bodily ills? Jesus wanted to make people better - physically as well as spiritually. God created us body and soul...Get this, bishops!
One word: paranoia.
They are convinced that the Western World is trying to pervert their native traditions and cultures ... some of which are a cause for concern in the West.
Simply shocking ignorance and criminal negligence in allowing such a crass stupidity to affect the lives of so many children.
At best, this is ignorance; at worst it is child abuse masquerading as care of the worst kind.
I just hope that the medical, nursing, midwifery and community health professionals will raise their voice to support the courageous stance of Dr Duggan.
Absolute shame on such stupidity!!!
I can't see why the Bishops in Kenia are interferring in health matters. They are not trained in medicine, so should keep out of the discussions.
Open mouth & insert feet.
How many of these African bishops had any background in college level science studies before entering the clergy??
Thank you for this blog. As a retired Health Visitor I have also wondered what is going on. The beneficence of these vaccine programmes seems self evident. The Kenyan Bishops clearly didn't get the idea that maternal and neonatal tetanus doesn't affect men although it may sadly affect male babies and they were included in the vaccination programme. At first I thought it was misogyny but now I am not sure as the Bishops are not happy about the polio vaccine programme. We all know that polio is not gender specific. Where are the Bishops taking their advice from? Is somebody's back not being scratched well enough? Are the Bishops not being fawned to in the way they expect? I am genuinely at a loss for an answer and I can't really believe the Bishops don't have advisors at hand to stop them looking so foolish in public. Not to mention the mothers and children who will die or be life long affected by their silly stance. So, over to the readers of The Tablet. Please will someone enlighten me.