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The causes of illness are varied but experts say that hygiene contibutes about 50% of all sicknesses in the country. This people are struggling to make ends meet through oil floods after an oil tanker crush. Oil is ofcourse a strong toxicant and pollution agent which exercabates the expression of inhygiene among comunities.
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By Khalwale James
July 2, 2010
Only 40 percent of the population in Kisumu and Nyanza province at large can access safe water and thousands others cannot get good sanitation including garbage disposal a reflection of the government failure in provision of health facilities to the majority poor, Nyanza provincial public health officer Mr Tom Andebe said yesterday.
He also said that the risk is higher risk in rural areas where water and sanitation coverage is low particularly to the poor and vulnerable groups who are estimated to be spending ten times more shillings on water resource than their average and rich counterparts.
"Although access to clean and safe water is a basic human right, policy implementers have not ensured this is done especially to the poor who form the majority of our population," he remarked.
Wash co-ordinator Mr Alfred Adongo said that in effort to campaign for sanitation and hand washing with soap, lack of water has been a major barrier.
He said the country is running short of water resource as the population continues to sky rocket which has seen the reduction of water per capita from 1853 in 1969 to 704 cubic metres per person in the year 2000.
"The current estimate of 647 cubic metres is going below the global bench mark of 1000 and from this trend, Kenya's per capita water availability will be at a danger zone of 235 cubic metres in 2025," said WASH united coordinator Mr Adongo Alfred quoting statistics from various records.
The public health officer Mr Andebe said that lack of clean water and general sensitivity to sanitation was the womb in which preventable killer diseases such as cholera were conceived pointing out that the situation was worse in schools where toilet facilities are scarce as well.
He said that sanitation and hygiene related illnesses account for about 50 percent of all hospital attendances in Kenya with approximately 30,000 people dying annually in as a result of preventable diarrhoeal diseases
The diseases are also responsible for 16 percent of all mortalities in children of less than five years of age with the paediatric death toll exceeding that of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined; yet more than 4000 people including children die every day for lack of clean water and other sanitation facilities, he said.
According to a research conducted in 2006, WASH united coordinator Mr Adongo said that 90 percent of rural schools in the country lack access to safe drinking water and do not have any hand washing facility.
Whereas the recommended pupil to one door latrine ratio is 25 and 35 for girls and boys respectively, he observes that schools in Nyanza province offer an average ratio of above 64 for both girls and boys with a similar ratio in public schools in Nairobi, Machakos, Kiambu and Kajiado; and 333 in Mombasa municipalities according to a similar research in the year 2006.
"These variations continue to occur especially after 2003 when free primary education was introduced increasing enrolment to up to 1.3 million with an equivalent increase in basic resources such as water," Mr Mwaki said.
He said one percent of the children wash hands with soap consistently after using latrines and after eating which translates a negative impact on the health of most pupils especially in rural areas.
Mr Adongo said that although 97 percent of the Kenyan population can afford access to soap, only five percent of them used soap to clean hands consistently.
"And that is why it is not easy to fight water borne diseases because hands contribute a lot in the transmissions," Mr Adongo said.
With at least six percent of total population in Nairobi completely lacking access to toilet facilities thereby using flying toilets and open spaces, the risk is not smaller in poor residential areas where dependent on water is from vendors, wells, boreholes and other sources that are dubious.
The ministry of public health and sanitation has the overall mandate for hygiene education and basic education to contain water and sanitation borne illnesses such as dysentery, cholera, diarrhoea and typhoid through the environmental sanitation and hygiene policy (MoPHS), school water, sanitation and hygiene international (WASH) among others.
A five year research plan which has reached its fourth year in schools by WASH program is being conducted in 105 schools in Nyanza province to identify the relationship between sanitation and school absenteeism, pupil diarrhoea, worm infection, children illnesses and clinic visits among other variables with a mission to bring out necessary interventions to scale.
In partial findings from research plan, CARE Kenya school team leader Mr Alex Mwaki said a 39 percent reduction of school absenteeism was observed among girls in schools where they introduced proper sanitation facilities but no significant change among boys and that 50 percent of pupils get re-infected with water borne diseases after treatment in their schools.
This explains how sanitation can impact on education in terms of gender roles and sensitivity and also how insensitive families are towards sanitation of children at home.
They were speaking during the launch of Wash united which aims to link sanitation to football celebrities in a Kisumu hotel
