Failure to pay a clearance fee of Sh5 million led to wastage of life-saving vaccines worth Sh180 million donated to Kenya to help protect women and children from five deadly diseases.
This was at a time there was a shortage of the vaccines in public hospitals.
The 6.1 tonne consignment of 2,280,000 doses of pentavalent vaccine was brought into the country in 2017, but expired the following year because authorities failed to clear the cargo.
According to a source at the Swiss port warehouse at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the government could have paid less than Sh5 million for the normal port charges if it had cleared the consignment on time.
However, the amount has risen to Sh30 million because of the default in payments and now Swiss port wants the consignment destroyed to free up space.
The Ministry of Health had contracted Siginon Group Limited to handle the clearance of the consignment.
As Swissport insists the bad drugs be removed from its warehouse to free space, Siginon Group Limited has also maintained that the drugs will only be destroyed after the shipping charges have been cleared.
Another question is who is now going to foot the destruction cost between Siginon and the Ministry of Health.
The ministry insists it is not its responsibility to destroy the goods since it was Siginon's duty to handle and clear the consignment. For a consignment to be destroyed, the parties responsible have to foot the cost of destruction. Roughly it costs Sh30 per kilogramme.
The Pharmacy and Poisons Board, which has the mandate of ensuring safety of Kenyans while the vaccines are being destroyed, calls on the two parties to ensure they act as fast as possible lest the consignment is relabelled and sent to the market.
The government has since changed its contract for vaccine clearance and distribution from Siginon to Unicef.
By the time the vaccine was being imported, Siginon had a two year contract from 2015 to July 2017.
But in February 2017, Siginon, which demanded to be paid after shipping in the consignment, suspended clearance services due to internal cash flow challenges. The development comes after the Nation obtained correspondents between the State agencies on the destruction of the vaccines.
No one including the state agencies, wants to take blame with some of the senior officials at the Ministry blaming the former health Principal Secretary, Peter Tum for the expiry of the vaccines.
The pentavalent vaccine — also known as a Five-In-One — donated by the Serum Institute India, is currently in the country’s immunisation programme.
It prevents five major diseases — haemophilus influenza type B (the bacteria that causes meningitis, pneumonia and otitis media – ear infection), diptheria, whooping cough, hepatitis B and tetanus.
According to the Ministry of Health, Siginon did not honour its part of the deal, which was indicated in the contract stating that there were contract execution challenges.
The ministry told the Nation that according to the clearance contract, it required that the agent clears the vaccines from the landing sheds, including payment of all third-party charges, delivers the same to the Ministry of Health’s Central Vaccines Depots and then invoices the Ministry for payment.
The payment process, according to a statement from the ministry, is that they receive the invoices, confirms receipt of service in writing then processes the payment through the procurement department.
However, the vaccines were not cleared for entry into the country as per contract by the clearing agent because the shipping agency demanded to be paid before releasing the consignment.
“The clearing agent was not able to honour the contract and subsequently clear the vaccines from the Swissport handling shed, with subsequent loss of shelf life and expiry of the vaccines before arrival,” says a statement from the ministry.
The ministry blamed Siginon for variations in and application of demurrage costs constraining contract execution
Subsequently, the vaccine held at the Swissport terminal had its shelf life end in April 2018, by which time the vaccine had lost viability, six months to the expiry date of October 2018.
