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{
    "id": 1272738,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1272738/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 193,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Marsabit County, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Naomi Waqo",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you very much for allowing me to add my voice to this very important Motion that has been brought to us by Hon. Timothy Toroitich. I also want to thank him for coming up with a Motion that is of concern to each one of us. As many Hon. Members have said, cancer is a disease that is affecting us as a country, and has affected many families in a huge way. Some people have suffered by their family members being sick. Others have even lost two family members and you can imagine their stress. This is because it financially drains them and you can imagine what many families have gone through, especially those who have been affected in terms of having two ailing members of the family. Before, we used to believe that cancer was a disease for old people but today, even a one-year-old baby or a six-months-old baby can get it. I have witnessed a child who was less than a year die of cancer. It was traumatising for the parents to sit there and take care of a sick child who was young, and could not even bear the pain. Families have been denied the opportunity to economically grow because of the confusion that this disease has brought into many homes. I know that even here, many of us have either been affected or survived cancer That is why, as the National Assembly, we need to give this Motion all the seriousness that it deserves. Cancer, as we all know, is said to be the third killer disease. But today, we can all agree that it is the first or the leading cause of death in Kenya. When it comes to the leading cancers, we have women who have died, or are suffering from cervical cancer. Some have died because of breast cancer. Many children and grown-ups are suffering because of chronic leukaemia. Others are suffering from stomach cancer and you can name them. The moment you hear of cancer in your family, it brings a lot of problems because it drains people financially and thus poverty levels of our people have been increased due to the nature of treatment that this disease requires. That is why, we as the leaders need to come up with measures and ways in which cancer can be fully controlled. That is why an establishment of the National Cancer Prevention and Control Fund is something that we need to set up now, and if not now, let it be like yesterday. It is good for us to advocate early screening of cancer and management in all the 47 counties. This is so that we minimise patients travelling outside the country in search of treatment. The people of Marsabit County, for example, travel for hundreds of kilometres to Nairobi, a distance of almost 700 kilometres in order to seek medication. But if we have cancer management centres in every county, and not only the buildings alone, but well equipped with doctors and experts on call, that can truly help the people and they would not need to travel far in search of treatment. Today, many cancer patients do not even come to Nairobi for cancer treatment. Many of them travel all the way to India. We have hospitals in this country. Why then would our people travel all the way to India? It is because the expenses that one would incur in Kenya would be about three or four times that of India. This then means that there is need for us to review the cost of cancer treatment. Proper research needs to be done in order to know the causes of cancer. People in my county suffer because of cancer while some have died. Nobody knows the cause. People blame eating of meat or animal products, others say it is because of the chemicals that we consume through food yet some of our people are not even exposed to chemicals. They live in natural and traditional way, and you wonder where and how they get this disease. Others say that it is because of the refrigerated food yet many of our people do not have even refrigerators in their homes. We need to invest in thorough research to find the cause. Again, there is need for us, as a country, to provide good medical care to the patients and the caregivers. Counselling to both the sick and the caregivers is something that we need to do. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}