It’s not right to ask Kenyans to avoid Covid-19 vaccination

 

In a scene strikingly reminiscent of what a hellfire and brimstone preacher would sound like, the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association (KCDA) released an anti-Covid vaccine statement last week titled Stoping(sic) Ravages and Loss of Human Life from Covid-19. The most irresponsible part of the nine-page statement was this: “ A vaccine for Covid-19 is unnecessary and should not be given. We appeal to all people of Kenya to avoid taking this vaccine.”

Huh?

The bold and emphatic statement may be hard to challenge, given its potent mixture of religion and science. The association claims it’s guided by the Catholic faith and the Hippocratic Oath. It gives no concessions for competing claims.

Isn’t that what happens on some pulpits as well, where some all-knowing preachers interpret life as they so wish, confident that nobody will challenge them? Last week, my Uber driver told me about their hellfire preacher, who told them that the Covid-19 vaccine was the mark of the 666 beast and that it would render all of them infertile.

Blasphemy

To be fair, other Kenyan medics unaffiliated with the association have also raised concerns over the side effects of the vaccine and urged the government to invest in training and sensitisation about it. However, they still encouraged their colleagues to get the vaccine because that’s the responsible thing to do.

Thankfully, the Catholic Church has distanced itself from the skulduggery of KCDA. The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) issued a statement on Tuesday urging faithful who are willing to accept the vaccine to go ahead and take it. Unlike KCDA, they recognise that God gave everyone free will. Their statement leaves their faithful free to construct their own realities and draw their own conclusions. To stand in the way of anybody who wants to exercise this free will by polluting their minds with prophecies of doom about the vaccine is tantamount to blasphemy.

KCDA must be speaking for a different Catholic church from the one they claim to represent because Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI received the Covid-19 vaccine on January 14.

The scepticism expressed by KCDA about the vaccine sets a bad precedent that might lead some Kenyans to make decisions that will endanger their lives. We’ve lost close to 2,000 lives already. Any loss of life is one too many. And the UK strain of Covid-19 is in Kenya thanks to British soldiers. We can’t afford to gamble with lives.

Suppose the KCDA members are as Catholic as they claim to be. In that case, they should get the shackles of self-righteousness off their feet and choose to live by these words from Pope Francis, who said that vaccination is “an ethical action because you are gambling with your health, you are gambling with your life, but you are also gambling with the lives of others”.

BY DAILY NATION