I’m not Rambo, nor am I any superhero you can think of.
But that seems to be what one needs to be to survive Coronavirus, right? Superheroes don’t get the virus, and if they do, they’d survive from it, somehow. Because they’re superheroes. Duh.
But this is the thing: superheroes and muscly macho men with supernatural abilities like Rambo don’t actually exist. I know that, and you know that.
So why doesn’t Kenyatta Hospital know that?
I came across an advert the other day. The advert shows a woman with her head traditionally wrapped in a kitamba, breathing through an oxygen mask. She’s clearly in hospital. The copy on the side said, ‘Lakini mbona hujapata Chanjo ya Covid-19? Eeh? Ama wewe ni Rambo?’ Then the KNH logo was emblazoned at the bottom, along with a run of the mill hashtag: #KNHInakujali.
How rude. How tone deaf and insincere. How much like a gaslighter the beacon of our medical practice in Kenya sounds. They need to hire another copywriter, for one thing. For those who do not speak Kiswahili, the ad is asking, ‘Why haven’t you gotten the COVID vaccine? Huh? Or are you Rambo?’ and then at the bottom, ‘KNH cares for you.’
Enough vaccines
No, it most certainly does not. After I move on from the obvious problem that is, it is not KNH’s fault that they don’t have enough vaccines, and therefore there’s a government problem with distribution there as opposed to the hospital’s problem – who the hell authorised this thing?
Vaccines in Kenya are not enough for the general population – so much so that it was only at risk and vulnerable groups allowed to access the vaccines – i.e. older people, people living with disabilities, those with pre-existing conditions, and so on, and so forth. KNH’s copywriters make it sound like people are just refusing to come get the vaccine.
Which, by the way, is not entirely untrue. I’ll give them that. But I know for a fact, and I know people who have been turned away from KNH itself (and other hospitals – Mbagathi, Aga Khan, MP Shah) for not being in those vulnerable groups. So on one side, you don’t think you’re Rambo, so you go line up to get the vaccine.
On the other hand, the hospital will refuse to give you the vaccine, because you don’t qualify. With this information in mind, why would you release something like this? Who is the real macho man here? The guy who thought this copy was a good idea – especially the part for using a fictional character to guilt people into going for a vaccine in a global pandemic in a system that doesn’t allow them to.
Yes, there are people who do not want to get the vaccine. But the fact remains, the people who do want the vaccine aren’t necessarily the ones who CAN get it. There are many people who want to – who are dying to – get the vaccine, and cannot. They would love to be able to go to Kenyatta and say, look, we’re scared of this virus, give us a fighting chance.
But they can’t do that. Even now, when there are more vaccines being given out, you can’t get the second dose if you haven’t gotten the first – which excludes many more. And we’re supposed to wait until what, October, for the next shipment? But no. Instead, let’s do a whole campaign asking why Kenyans haven’t gotten the vaccine.
This ad completely ignores the circumstances of vaccine apartheid, especially in Kenya, and is a mockery of those people, those Kenyans who actually want to get the vaccine. ‘Kwa nini hujapata chanjo?’ Kwa sababu hujatupatia. BY DAILY NATION