Kagwe put to task over botched Sputnik Covid-19 vaccine deal

Agriculture and Livestock Cabinet Secretary nominee Mutahi Kagwe has been put on task to explain how Sputnik vaccine arrived in the country and its withdrawal from the approved vaccines against Covid-19, during his tenure as the then Health CS.
Responding to a query put forward by North Imenti y MP Rahim Dawood during his vetting by the National Assembly Committee on Appointments at Parliament buildings in Nairobi, Kagwe said as the then Health CS, he wasn’t the one who was approving or disapproving the vaccines to be used in Kenya.
He said, “There was not a single vaccine that we allowed into Kenya that was not approved, and there was not a single vaccine that we refused to take that was approved. The issue here is who approves it.
“Our rule within the National Executive Emergency Committee on Coronavirus, and following the advice that we also got, is that we did not use any vaccines that were not World Health Organisation (WHO)-approved,” he said
Kagwe added that he was aware at the time that the government discussions with Sputnik had stalled because the conditions it had given to the Russian company that was supplying the vaccine were to first seek the necessary approvals from the WHO before the vaccine could be used in Kenya.
However, the MP sought clarity on whether the vaccine in question had been imported into Kenya and administered on people without the approvals before it was haphazardly withdrawn.
“All I can say is that whether a vaccine has arrived in the country or not, no matter how it has arrived in the country or not, if it has not been approved by the WHO, we cannot use it and we didn’t use it,” said Kagwe.
At the time, there was controversy over the use of Sputnik even as it emerged that Kenya was pursuing a deal to
get one million doses to they country with reports in Russia indicating it was part of a controversial scheme involving an Abu Dhabi-based company with royal connections, which had inked deals to resell Russia’s flagship coronavirus vaccine at huge mark-ups.
The Moscow Times, citing documents in its possession, said that Aurugulf Health Investments — a firm registered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and linked to Emirati royalty — as an official Sputnik V reseller in Kenya, had secured a contract with private healthcare company Dinlas Pharma to ship at least one million jabs to the country.
The deal eventually collapsed after the government established that a first shipment of 75,000 doses, which arrived in Kenya on March 22, 2021, had not come direct from the Russian government, and subsequently blocked them from use across the country at a time when Covid-19 cases were surging.
Russian Direct Investment Fund has announced at the time that Kenya was among 10 African countries that had approved the vaccine under the emergency use authorisation procedure.
Meanwhile, Kagwe promised to make farming “cool” among Kenyan youth, if he was approved as the CS for Agriculture.
Kagwe said agriculture needs to be made attractive to the youth by incorporating new developments in the sector such as financial technology (fintech) and artificial intelligence (AI) in training modules.
“Agriculture has to be made cool for the youth to embrace it. It is too boring currently and needs to include technology and new ways of doing things. We will work with the education ministry to revamp how we train agriculture students,” Kagwe told the National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula-led committee.