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{
"id": 1340976,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1340976/?format=api",
"text_counter": 246,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr Susan Nakhumicha",
"speaker_title": "The Cabinet Secretary for Health",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker and Members. It is, indeed, an honour and privilege for me to appear before this honourable House today to respond to the various Questions that have been raised by Hon. Members. Indeed, it is my first time to appear before the full House to directly interact with Hon. Members as my previous engagements have been through the committees. I, therefore, submit as follows on the Question raised by Hon. Mishi Mboko. As a country, we suffer from periodic cholera outbreaks every five to seven years since the first cases were reported in 1971. The current cholera outbreak has been ongoing since October 2022. To date, we have reported 12,000 cases and 197 deaths. To mitigate this, the Ministry of Health in conjunction with other sectors of the Government, including the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation, the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Interior and Internal Affairs, development partners, religious leaders, the media and the county governments, have developed 2022-2030 National Multi-Sectoral Cholera Elimination Plan, which my colleague, Cabinet Secretary for Water, Sanitation and Irrigation and myself have endorsed and it is due for a launch this month. The plan aims to implement several promotive, preventive and response interventions before and during outbreaks. The main interventions include engaging communities to use latrines, practice hand washing with soap and water, use treated or boiled water for drinking and keep their environments clean. The Government is also expanding safe water and sanitation infrastructure across the country. In addition to these traditional cholera prevention and control measures, the country conducted its first oral cholera vaccination campaign in February 2023 in the highest risk sub- counties in line with our National Multi-Sectoral Cholera Elimination Plan (NMCEP). The goal of NMCEP targets to reduce local transmission of cholera cases to zero by 2030 and reduce cholera deaths to zero by 2030. We have just concluded the second phase of the campaigns, which were done in August 2023 this past weekend in eight sub-counties of Embakasi Central and Kamukunji in Nairobi, Kajiado East in Kajiado, Wajir North in Wajir, Suba South in Homa Bay, Moyale in Marsabit and Mandera East in Mandera. We also targeted institutions in Machakos and new arrival refugees in the refugee camps within Garissa. The August 2023 campaign targets 1.7million people. The February campaign involved nine sub-counties in four counties namely, Embakasi East and Mathare in Nairobi, Wajir East and Wajir South in Wajir, Garissa Town, Dadaab, Fafi, Lagdera including the refugee camps and Bura in Tana River County. We targeted to reach 2.2 million people and we vaccinated 99.2 per cent of them. As a result of the campaign, we saw a drastic reduction in cholera cases in the affected counties and also nationally as per a Table I have attached to my presentation. On contributions of International Coordinating Group (ICG) including vaccine doses and conditions, the international consortium brings together four-member agencies, namely, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which has a strong country presence for community health promotion, local social and resource mobilisation and provide support to States during disasters and epidemics. The second agency is Médecins sans Frontiéres, which is an independent field-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) that provides health care to vulnerable populations in emergency settings."
}