How seriously does the Kenyan Government take preventive health-care?

How seriously does the Kenyan Government take preventive health Care?

           By Chrispory Juma Ombuya

When Isiolo’s residents were on record to be recycling used condoms or using polythene bags, it became a national shame as to how our health care system has failed. It became a question of teaching the people the necessity of milk but not giving the cups with which to drink it. The public health implications of this action aside, we lay bare our inability to establish preventive health care for our people.

The general public may have been surprised. But personally as a Public Health student, the reality of how the government has preferred curative health care to preventive health care re-affirmed itself to me. If a government can’t provide condoms for just nearly 20 million sexually active Kenyans, how able is it to provide facilities that can provide treatment against diseases that result from unprotected sex if prevention is really cheaper that cure?

Preventive health care includes measures taken to prevent diseases rather than curing them or treating their symptoms. Preventive health care measures include hygiene and sanitation, immunization, chemoprophylaxis, disease surveillance, screening, safe sex, nutrition and health promotion. It is also called Public Health which means that it deals with the health of populations rather than that of an individual. It also means that health is not just the absence of disease or infirmity but a state of full physical, mental, social and spiritual wellness.

Therefore, for a developing country like Kenya, preventive health care should be a priority. But every year, millions of Kenyans die from preventable diseases. Chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes and hypertension and infectious diseases like cholera and HIV/AIDS continue to take lives daily. Road accidents fatalities have become parts of our everyday lives.

The writing is all on the wall: the government has failed to make preventive health care practicable and accessible for all Kenyans. To me it is a policy issue. It appears that the health patriarchs convinced our political class that cure was better than prevention.

On personnel development, the government seems focused on increasing the number of doctors and nurses and improving on their welfares. There are proper structures of personnel transition through proper internship programmes. But what of PHOs? We must agree that there is a point from the 1970s when PHOs lost grip of preventive medicine in Kenya. It is no surprise that other professionals hold senior preventive health care policy making organs in the government. PHO interns continue to languish in a sea of confusion with relatively despicable terms of engagement. There are talks of Public Health graduates moving to the NGO world and deserting the government jobs offered to them, some even without notice. I owe it all to the deplorable conditions and terms on offer.

How many cancer screening centers do we have in this country? Fact of the matter is that there are more malarial clinical centers than diagnostic centers in Kenya. We should invest more in VCT and Recreational Centers just as we invest in constructing hospitals. We must give emphasis on community strategies just as we give clinical ones.

The splitting of the Ministry of Health into that of Medical services and Public Health and Sanitation was deemed to be a good opportunity to re-define preventive health. Inspite of the frequent bickering of ministers for either side over power, I must commend the Chief Public Health Officer for the efforts he is making to prioritize preventive health through personnel capacitation and institutional changes.

The writer is a final-year Environmental Health student at Moi University, School of Public Health.

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Media Council's Call was hypocritical

Media Council’s call was hypocritical

By Chrispory Juma Ombuya

This month has been greeted by the reality of how sexual immorality has grounded itself in the structures of our society to an extent that we can shamelessly have sex in open places. We appreciate the media for always being the public’s moral watchdog.

Impunitive sexual expeditions by the people at Kakamega’s Muliro Gardens have been the talk of everyone, thanks to walalahoi.com which posted pictures of those who had turned a park named after a hero into a brothel. The Nairobi Star, true to its motto, lamented over our moral decadence in its pages and went ahead to post some of the pictures.

But in a dramatically ridiculous twist, The Media Council joined the government in condemning this bold move. Lead by the Council’s chairman, Dr. Levy Obong’o this council that has failed to totally regulate media content termed this move as contempt of social order, family values, journalism codes and Kenya’s historical sites.

If such acts could be done unabated in Muliro Gardens, how many may be going on in Kisumus’s Kenyatta grounds or Nairobi’s Uhuru Park. Isn’t it the media’s role to expose these social indecencies? Or must they not be exposed completely? What constitutes media information? I believe it is both words and pictures. The Nairobi Star was journalistically and morally justified to ridicule the society in words and pictures. Or maybe the Media should tell us where these acts should be exposed or we should just be quiet.

Media Council has blatantly refused or failed to control pornographic material in Kenya. I believe the media constitutes both electronic and print. Sexually explicit pictures and lude pornographic videos can be accessed by anybody; one just needs internet connection and the relevant sites. Or these are beyond the councils jurisdictions? Our own print media outlets throughout the country sell pornographic magazines or booklets. My point is that sexually explicit pictures are rampant everywhere. What then is wrong with using a real situation picture to highlight the society’s moral problems?

We must not live a lie if in any case we want to change the society’s moral character moreso the youth’s. These are issues we can’t afford to keep quite over as if we leave in some traditional society where discussions on sexual issues are forbidden. This would be archaic and forbidden.

Indecent sexual behaviour is a real social problem just as corruption. The way we capture corrupt traffic officers taking bribes on our roads is the same way we need to expose other indecent acts. What the council is portraying is that it only wants the media houses to report what makes the family and the general public happy. We must be made to feel embarrassed for our actions. That is my opinion.

The writer is a final year Environmental Health student at Moi University. He is currently on attachment in Kakamega Central District.

                                                                                          

Newpaper Habits

Let’s have proper newspaper etiquette

Newspapers play a big role in informing the public as part of the wider mass media. Inspite of the presence of accessible and cheap internet, they have continued to thrive as people insist that ‘had copies’ bring the best perspective. They have become a source of social braggadocio for the selected few who can afford them. They shape the modes and topics of debates in our village Kumukunjis.  They have given thousands of vendors’ livelihoods.

But have we ‘the readers’ taken time to think of how we handle newspapers. Our handling has been such embarrassingly poor that the major newspapers providers, ‘The Standard’ and ‘Nation’ have had to staple their newspapers to prevent those who do have to pay from dirtying or plundering with the newspapers.

There are those who never buy newspapers. Their job is to go early to the vendors’ stations, wait for the delivery van to arrive as though they want to buy the papers. They crowd the newspaper stands that even the genuine buyers can’t have time to buy. Some ven have the guts to open the newspapers are flip them over. This is bad manners.

There are those who just love folding other people’s newspapers. When one gives you a newspaper, kindly return it in the same condition you were given.

When some people are helped with a newspaper to read then again turn into lenders. Someone’s newspaper ends up changing hands to an extent that when it gets back, it is in tatters.

Many people hold the opinion that by nightfall, the day’s newspaper turns into a tissue paper or karatasi ya kuwakusha jiko. Some of us attach a lot of value to newspapers. They are our information archives, our points of reference. Therefore we need to handle them carefully when helped.

There is a group of newspaper owners who are not willing to help others with their papers. While I advocate that we need to buy our own newspapers if we really love reading, there is no need to deny other people to read something that at times you have just bought a symbol of social status.

These people who ask others about information in newspapers they have in their hands should cease. This is bad manners. If you can’t read a newspaper don’t buy or if you have it buy, give it to someone who can read it for you, not wagging it everywhere yet you do not know anything about it. I hope we shall all change how we handle newspapers. It really speaks a lot about our character.

Chrispory Juma Ombuya,

Moi University.