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"id": 190120,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Foreign Affairs",
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"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to this very positive Motion. I will start by congratulating the Mover, Dr. Eseli, because we all know that a healthy nation is a productive nation and healthy people are also productive people. You may recall that in the good old days, we used to have public health officers, commonly called Bora Afya, who used to go round the countryside spraying pools of water, trees and sometimes people's homes to eliminate mosquitoes that cause malaria. Of course, in the course of time and after accepting ill-advised information from the World Bank and other organisations, telling the Government to get out of everything, some of these programmes collapsed. You may recall that the Government withdrew from running cattle dips and they all collapsed. Now we have a problem with our dips. Many things collapsed. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, under Vision 2030, one of the key components of success for this country is to have a healthy nation. We should have people who can access medicare easily; people who are kept healthy by the Government in partnership with the private sector providing adequate facilities for medication. Malaria remains the single largest killer in the tropical world; Whether you are talking of Kenya, Asia, or the Caribbean, malaria has remained a deadly killer. Most victims are women particularly expectant mothers and children under the age of five. When you lose pregnant or expectant mothers and children under the age of five, it is like exterminating your own population. It is important that we take care of this vulnerable segment of our society. The Mover has asked for adequate control of malaria transmission by spraying. What I do not know is how Dr. Eseli arrived at a quarterly spray because spray will certainly depend on the strength and its efficacy. If it is a weak drug, it may not last a quarter of the year. So, it will also have to be looked at to see whether it is done monthly, quarterly, half yearly or yearly depending on the efficacy of the drug. I think we need to be advised on this properly by the Ministry concerned. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have always said and I never shy away from saying that the scourge of HIV/AIDS that haunts particularly developing countries diverted away attention from even more deadly killer diseases, malaria being one of them Tuberculosis has resurged with a lot of strength. We have also diarrhoea dysentery and all other water borne diseases. But public servants and politicians like ourselves sing about HIV/AIDS everywhere in public. We forget that HIV/AIDS, unless, infected does not kill children under five years. HIV/AIDS can be controlled through human behaviour. But malaria cannot be controlled through human behaviour. There has to be an intervening factor by the state, particularly to stop the spread of malaria and the dangers that it causes. I agree with Dr. Khalwale that a large population that is properly educated and harnessed is a bond for growth. If you look at India or Asia; Asia has been under the scourge of malaria. But they have successfully controlled malaria to manageable levels because they have invested money in research, prevention and curative approaches to the disease. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this country, at one time was the largest producer of pyrethrum in the world. Pyrethrum is not a chemical product. It is a plant product. It is what I believe Dr. Eseli is envisaging here. It has no harmful side effects. If we could produce our own insecticides from pyrethrum, it will be user friendly, harmless to the population and above all, it may be cheaper to use. Equally, I want to throw a challenge at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). The KEMRI has been researching on drugs for many years. But if you walk into any pharmacy in this country, you will find that 99 per cent of all malaria drugs are imported. Surely, by now we should have some locally produced malaria drugs to make them cheaper and accessible by everybody. If you look at India with 1.1 billion people; Pakistan with 150 million people, Bangladesh with 150 million people, Vietnam with 87 million people, Indonesia with 240 million people, all these countries are recording phenomenal economic growth because they are July 9, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1717 tapping from their people, because they are fighting scourges like malaria, because they have healthy people. I want all of us to embrace this Motion because it is good for this country. We used to think in the old days that people in the highlands like Limuru and Kericho do not get affected by malaria. But these days, malaria is sweeping the whole country, whether you are on the peak of Mt. Kenya or Mt. Elgon or wherever. So, it now behooves upon us, as leaders; this Parliament debates and determines Budgets. We must think of how to set aside money, first of all, to carry out proper research so that what Dr. Eseli is talking about spraying, we do not go and spray poison in people's homes. This is because we have drugs and sprays in the market that can be slow killing poisons. Let us look at how we can produce this insecticides from pyrethrum which we produce and revamp the production of this crop. Those of us who represent producers of pyrethrum will be quiet happy that their constituents will earn a better living. Then, we can move on. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I urge all of us to support the Motion. It is a good Motion. Once it is passed, it should be followed up to implementation, because there is not a single Member in this country, particularly those who represent malaria prone areas like western and the lake region, who can think that this Motion is not good. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}