Local doctors angry as Kenya offers COVID vaccines to diplomats

Medics criticise move by gov’t to offer jabs to diplomats even though it has not completed inoculating health workers.

Kenya has offered free COVID-19 vaccines to all diplomats based there, including thousands of United Nations staff, even though it has not completed inoculating its own health workers, other front-line staff or elderly, drawing criticism from local medics. The offer was made in a March 18 letter sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to diplomatic missions and seen by Reuters news agency. Macharia Kamau, the foreign ministry’s principal secretary, said the shots being offered had been supplied via the World Health Organization (WHO) co-led COVAX vaccine access scheme.