Harold Kipchumba dreamed of growing up and joining the Kenyan army. In 1986, at the age of 22, he showed up to military boot camp on crutches, but was turned away on sight and told that his military status had been revoked due to his disability.
Kipchumba developed polio at the age of three. The disease left him with permanent paralysis in both of his legs.
Kipchumba, who was born in the 1960s in the then-remote Baringo district, arrived a decade before vaccinations became available. The world’s first two polio vaccines, Jonas Salk’s vaccine and Albert Sabin’s vaccine, began being rolled out in the United States in 1955 and 1961, respectively, but neither was introduced in African countries until the 1970s .
“These days, it’s easy to prevent polio. All you need is a vaccine. They’re now going around vaccinating babies in the neighborhood, something that wasn’t available back then.”
– Ruth Kobilo Kimuge, 94, mother of Kipchumba
When they did, they made a huge impact. Kenya has not recorded a case of polio in 22 years since 1984.
However, in 2006 there was a resurgence of polio. Fortunately, by then Kipchumba had found both his voice and his cause.
mysterious disease
“It took us a very long time to find the cause of my son’s illness,” Ruth Kobilo Kimuge, now 94, said in her first media interview. She remembers traveling across the country in search of a cure for her son. Doctors prescribed various treatments, but none of them worked.
Harold Kipchumba’s mother, Ruth Kobilo Kimuge, during an interview with Vaccine Work.
Credit: Joseph Maina
“A doctor in the United States finally told me it was polio. He said there was no cure for this disease,” Cobilo recalled. On a sunny afternoon in September, she was sitting on the balcony of her son’s house near the city of Nakuru.
There was a stigma attached to the family, she said. Having given birth to a deformed child, she became the object of much pity and ridicule from her relatives and community, some of whom considered Kobilo to be cursed. As tensions escalated, Kipchumba’s father, now deceased, married his second wife.
Kobilo felt some relief when Catholic missionaries found the child in the hospital and offered to take him to receive specialized care and education. Kipchumba went with them, was educated in an orphanage, and grew up dreaming of an unlikely military dream.
“It’s easy to prevent polio these days. All you need is a vaccine. Now we’re vaccinating babies in our neighborhood. Back then, we didn’t have anything like that,” Kobilo said wistfully.
find his voice
Kipchumba says he was bitten by the “activism bug” when he was a student. He was endowed with an amazing talent for oratory, which came in handy on many occasions.
And even as he boldly hobbled into the recruiting hall on crutches that morning in 1986, unfazed by the stares from his fellow candidates and barely holding back, he continued to advocate for the disabled. It was done effectively.
Recalling the incident, he told Vaccine Work that he knew he didn’t have a chance. Still, he wanted to impress upon military leaders that disabled people could contribute to the nation’s defense needs if assigned to less physically demanding roles such as typists or receptionists.
Harold Kipchumba speaks with Vaccine Work from his home near the city of Nakuru.
Credit: Joseph Maina
In the early 2000s, he began advocating for children’s vaccinations and disability rights, among other things. In response to the 2013 polio outbreak in neighboring Somalia, he began advocating for a polio vaccine in 2013, working closely with influential advocates including the country’s then-first lady Margaret Kenyatta. cooperated with.
“I was serving as a senator at the time,” Kipchumba explained. Kipchumba served as a nominated senator for six months starting in March 2013, the culmination of years of informal advocacy since dropping out of university in the 1980s.
“The First Lady came up with a program on maternal health care. At that time, the Ministry of Health was running a strong polio eradication campaign. I asked Ministry of Health officials to consider listening to the voices of polio survivors. But luckily they listened. I asked the first lady if I could be the face of polio control in this country, and she agreed. . ”
make a splash
He recalls that his first time in this role was in Nyari on the Kenyan coast.
“I gave a speech about the pain of living with polio, and many polio vaccine advocates chose their catchphrase from this speech. I explained what I missed.”
Kipchumba dropped yet another powerful soundbite, which Kenyan health officials hastily picked and used in polio awareness banners.
“When polio vaccination started in one of the slums in Kiambu County, I said, “If my mother had known, she would have taken me to get vaccinated. It was in the caption of a national polio ad. This touched so many people, and he was named the 2015 Kenya United Nations Award of the Year for his role in eradicating and eradicating vaccine-preventable diseases. In the same year, another former senator, Professor Anyang Nyong’o, summed up Mr Kipchumba’s advocacy milestones in a colorful eulogy delivered in the Kenyan Senate.
“Senator Kipchumba has done a lot of good for this Senate and the country,” Nyong’o said. “We are proud of his commitment not only to championing the rights of people with disabilities, but also to eradicating a disabling disease – polio – from the face of the earth.”
make a difference
Kipchumba is proud of his contribution to spreading awareness about polio vaccination, especially among vaccine-averse communities.
“We reached out to resilient communities, including faith-based organizations, indigenous groups, and some remote counties in Kenya. We also reached out to resistant communities, including faith-based organizations, indigenous groups, and some remote counties in Kenya. We were able to reach out to people who were less targeted, such as the elites who were showing the campaign and some urban communities.”
Nairobi County Health Promotion Director Lilian Mutua spoke to Vaccine Work in a telephone interview about what Kipchumba’s vaccination drive means for the capital region.
Lilian Mutua, Nairobi County Health Promotion Director;
Credit: Lilian Mutua
“We take him on board and explain to people that polio is real. We also work with him at our advocacy meetings, where he shares his He tells personal stories. He is a great storyteller and has been very successful in stirring up people’s emotions to think seriously about polio vaccination.
“We take him when we find vaccinations being refused in some areas. We also take him during launches. He is a national polio champion. He’s also helped other people tell their stories. He’s done very good work with denominations and communities and some ethnic groups who are reluctant to get vaccinated. Then those members end up becoming vaccine supporters.”
Abraham Sumukwo, a clinician at the Baringo County Health Department, told VaccinesWork that he has worked with Kipchumba for over 20 years, primarily on disability rights and vaccine advocacy. “I started working with Kipchumba in 2002, at a time when there was little systematic community engagement in our region. We have taught about the holistic needs of children and shown that these children are normal children with needs just like other children.
We have also worked closely with local media to educate communities about immunization against polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Sumukwo said that on polio vaccination days, Kipchumba set up a tent at the vaccination center and spoke to children and parents while administering the polio vaccine. He said that the combination of these efforts and widespread campaigns had led to an increase in overall polio uptake in Baringo County, particularly in the arid regions inhabited primarily by pastoralist communities, where uptake has been historically low. said.
“Downstream areas of Baringo County used to have vaccine uptake rates of about 30 to 40 per cent, but this has increased to up to 75 per cent,” Sumukwo said, adding that the increase in uptake has been seen over the past 20 years, especially in the region. revealed what happened. Drier areas of the county have traditionally suffered from reduced coverage.
In addition to his vaccine advocacy, Kipchumba is the founder and president of Bear Care, an organization that advocates for disability rights, human rights, and governance.
