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{
    "id": 1233784,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1233784/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 273,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mukurweini, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kaguchia John",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " I like you because you are the most engaging Temporary Speaker in this Assembly. We appreciate that. Once again, I rise due to the issue of public health concerns in our schools. That issue has caught us by surprise. I am not sure whether it is too much of a surprise because this problem has been building up. It has always been a time bomb. We, as a country, have ourselves to blame when we find ourselves in this situation. Medics have identified that Escherichia coli, sometimes called E.coli, is the bacterium that has been affecting the young people . Medics have identified the other one affecting our children as Salmonella typhi . Doctors will tell you that those bacteria are mainly infections based on hygiene. I had a discussion with an Hon. Member earlier on, about the typhoid and cholera outbreaks. Those are diseases that are generally known to affect third world countries. They are as a result of poor hygiene conditions in schools. I call your attention to the many policies that deal with public health in our schools. We have them in this country. We have a health policy on national schools. The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education developed it. We also have a Kenya School Health Policy. As recently as 2018, we had another school health policy that was also developed by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. No policies that we have developed have been implemented in our schools. For that reason, we find ourselves in a situation where our students are suffering because of errors of commission and omission by our administrators and ourselves. We may speak about death in our schools as something far-fetched or which is very far from us. Without giving many details, in recent times, we have also had Members in this Parliament admitted in hospitals with the disease, cholera. It is a fact and it happened recently. We are talking about students and yet, we are also affected in this House. It is because of sanitation. Sometimes, we may blame it on congestion and infrastructure in our schools but, some of those issues are as a result of failure to follow laid down health procedures and codes of operations. It is a big problem. The Ministry of Health is supposed to conduct public health inspections in schools. This has now been domiciled in our county governments. Are they doing their work? The answer is no. We no longer have the inspections done. We no longer have impromptu inspections in our schools. That department has died a natural death. When we have those inspections, the inspectors who go to schools have their hands greased to look the other way. That is even when they find that issues of sanitation and hygiene are not carefully taken care of. It is high time we took action as an Assembly and ensured that there is implementation and enforcement of those rules."
}