Global Health Leaders Converge in Nairobi as FIGO President Prof. Kihara Anne Beatrice Calls for Urgent Action on Maternal GBS Vaccination

  Professor  Anne Beatrice Kihara, President of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO). By George Mutua,  NAIROBI, KENYA 

 The urgent need for maternal vaccination against Group B Streptococcus (GBS) took centre stage in Nairobi as Professor  Anne Beatrice Kihara, President of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), delivered a powerful keynote address calling for accelerated action on maternal and newborn mortality ahead of a major global conference set for the Kenyan capital next year.

Speaking as the keynote speaker at the fourth conference on maternal immunisation, Prof. Kihara, president of the International Federation of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, emphasised the critical need to accelerate the reduction of maternal and newborn deaths through an initiative called "Every Woman, Every Newborn, Everywhere."

"Kenya is yet to reach the sustainable development goals, which speak of maternal mortality as less than 70,000, and newborn mortality at less than 12,000," Prof. Kihara noted. "Unfortunately, we are still off track."

The conference  brings together world leaders in Group B Streptococcus research, vaccine development, and public health to discuss, among other critical issues, the rollout of a global maternal vaccine against GBS. This year's conference is chaired by Dr. Hellen Barsosio, Clinical Research Scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (KEMRI-LSTM) Collaboration.

"Today's conversation, we are looking at a bacteria called Group B Streptococcus," Prof. Kihara explained. "Group B Streptococcus colonizes the reproductive tract of the mother. And in so doing, it can have effects on the mother and effects on the baby. For the baby, the baby may be born stillborn."

The statistics are alarming, an estimated 18-20 million women globally carry GBS each year. The bacteria is responsible for approximately 400,000 cases of invasive disease annually in infants, including sepsis and meningitis, and is linked to an estimated 91,000 infant deaths and 46,200 stillbirths worldwide.

"The baby may have to be delivered prematurely with adverse neurological problems because of infections that even include infections of the brain," Prof. Kihara warned. "So we must begin to really look at the epidemiology of the disease burden."

Integrated Approach Needed

Prof. Kihara emphasized that achieving maternal health goals requires collaboration across medical disciplines. "We need to put efforts together, the midwives, the gynaecologist, the paediatrician, the neonatologist, the physician. We must come together," she said.

Key priorities identified include making every pregnancy planned to avoid risks of unsafe abortions, ensuring sexually active individuals have access to family planning and contraception, and implementing the WHO-recommended eight contact visits during pregnancy.

She noted that health workers must monitor vital signs with particular attention to blood pressure. "We do know in pregnancy, if a mother does develop hypertension, she may end up with complications of convulsions, complications of her kidney system. The baby may have to be born prematurely, which even increases the risk of mortality."

"We have increasingly noted that we need to advance from just providing tetanus toxoid, which most of us do know, but begin to look at disease entities that can affect both the mother and the baby, with detrimental or even mortality as a result of infections," Prof. Kihara said.

Other diseases discussed include respiratory viruses like RSV, and lessons from COVID-19 vaccination programs for pregnant women. "What happened when COVID came? We had to get into vaccination programs even for pregnant women."

She warned that communicable diseases, including HIV, malaria, and TB, can have implications on the baby, adding that in today's world, "when lifestyle has a major contribution to the outcomes of mothers' health, it has a ripple effect on the baby."

A major theme emerging from the conference is the need for Kenya to develop its own context-specific maternal vaccination guidelines through systematic data collection and establishing data repositories.

"Last week we were busy trying to strengthen the data repository," Prof. Kihara revealed. "How do you link women coming to the clinic? We have a sound system where our national ID can actually be able to pinpoint you as an individual."

This data linkage, supported by Kenya's new Digital Act and data protection instruments, will enable health officials to understand disease burdens and provide sound vaccination to women across the nation.

The conference also celebrated progress within the African Union toward local manufacturing of medications, a lesson learned from COVID-19 when Africa depended heavily on imported drugs.

"When COVID did come, we depended a lot on drugs coming to us in Africa and even in Kenya," Prof. Kihara recalled. "The question is now, within the African context, we are building infrastructure with the hope that we can eventually be able to manufacture our own medications."

However, she cautioned that manufacturing medications without understanding the local disease picture would be useless. "We must have our local profiling to be able to give sound vaccination to the women of this nation."

As Kenya  hosts the global GBS community in 2026, the message from Prof. Kihara and other local health leaders is clear: understanding the burden of disease is the critical first step.

"So you understand the burden. Once you understand the burden, then it's to put in place the treatment and the prevention. We are at the beginning, and I must be very honest. We need to even develop our own context-specific maternal vaccination guideline."