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{
    "id": 190106,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/190106/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 181,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dr. Eseli",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 141,
        "legal_name": "David Eseli Simiyu",
        "slug": "david-eseli"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move the following Motion:- THAT, aware that malaria is one of the leading causes of ill health and death in Kenya, leading to reduced productivity of our population; further aware that this costs the Government huge sums of money in terms of treatment cost; cognisant that the basics of control of vector borne diseases is by eliminating the vector (in this case the mosquito) and acknowledging that mosquito nets have not adequately controlled malaria transmission; this House urges the Government to adopt a mandatory in-house spraying of all dwellings (homes and buildings) in all malaria 1710 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 9, 2008 endemic areas of Kenya with environmentally friendly residual insecticides on a quarterly basis in order to eliminate the mosquito vector more effectively. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I was prompted to bring this Motion to this House because several things have been going on in the area of malaria control for quite some time. Recently, there was the World Health Organisation (WHO) function on malaria control whereby they implied that every country will need to do something about the malaria control. Maybe just to give a background on malaria, one thing we should recognise is that \"malaria\" is neither a Swahili term nor an English term. It is not even in our vernacular. \"Malaria\" is a Latin term that means mal air or bad air. That tells us that malaria is not just an African problem. It is an international problem. Some countries have managed to eliminate malaria totally while in Africa, we have failed to eliminate malaria. When we should be doing things to eliminate malaria, we have been doing things that just increase the problem and it continues killing our population. Just as a background, currently, malaria kills about 38,000 children per year in Kenya and about 700,000 to 2.7 million people worldwide. So, it is a major problem. It has not been given the due attention that it requires. Just by anybody suffering from malaria, the man-hours lost, namely, people not going to work or maybe going to work, but not being productive effectively, are many. When you look at school children, you will find that the lost school time is a lot. This impacts negatively on their school performance. I know this might surprise very many people because people have been believing that one recovers completely from cerebral malaria. It has now been proven beyond reasonable doubt that serious malaria causes brain damage and leads to mental deficiency. That could explain some of the problems we are having in this country. That is coming from malaria. So, this is something that we need to really control."
}