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"content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me an opportunity to support this very important Vote of the Ministry of Health. First of all, I would like to commend the Minister and her team for the excellent work that they have been doing in this Ministry. As other hon. Members have said, in almost every constituency, one can see the improvements effected by this Ministry in terms of health centres, availability of drugs, new equipment, immunization and awareness on HIV/AIDS. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am not surprised that the rate of HIV/AIDS infection is coming down. There has been a very keen interest among members of the Provincial Adminstration, the Ministry of Health and the network of Constituency Aids Control Committees (CACCs). There has been a very intensive campaign to take awareness to the people. Therefore, I want to commend the Minister and hope that this support will continue. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also know that many hon. Members of Parliament have spent money from the CDF. In my own constituency, I have spent quite a bit of money to support health centres. This has been very much appreciated by the public. In fact, many of them have requested that some of these health centres be upgraded to the level of sub-district hospitals. This is, especially the case with the health centres in Gichira and Unjiru. These are two of our best health centres. I know they would serve the constituency and surrounding areas, including Mukurweini and Nyeri Municipality if they were upgraded to the level of sub-district hospitals. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to emphasize on the preventive medicine as mentioned by the Minister. I think we are still not paying enough attention to preventive medicine. Many countries which have good healthcare and whose citizens live long, have a very keen department of preventive medicine. There is also a very deep awareness about preventive medicine that is taught in schools. It starts in schools, for example, along the lines of personal hygiene. Children learn at a very early age how to keep themselves clean, take care of their bodies and ensure that they wash their hands. These are simple things, but very important to them. Our children ought to learn these things very early in schools. Some of these issues are very important and should be part of our primary curriculum. 2850 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 31, 2007 Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker Sir, one of the issues that has surprised me in my constituency is the fact that simple issues such as building of latrines are given very little attention, especially in schools. You go to schools and find dilapidated latrines without doors. Some of them look like they would collapse any time. Why does the Ministry of Health not condemn these latrines and force schools to build good ones for the children? Sometimes you find that the latrines are not adequate for the number of children in school. As I said, unless there is no water, children should be taught early enough that they should wash their hands after using latrines. So, this very simple but effective primary healthcare initiatives should form part of our personal hygiene and behaviour. The other issue that I think is very important, as part of preventive medicine, is the food we eat. So many times, we do not pay attention to the food that we eat. Again, we should learn very early what to eat, especially, in our societies where people have tended to associate certain food types with affluence, for example, eating a lot of meat and taking a lot of salt and sugar. When there is no education on how to use some of these very refined foodstuffs, eventually, we end up with diseases that are very uncommon in our societies. They include diseases such as high blood pressure and kidney diseases, which are closely associated with what we eat. I think, again, these are some of the instructions that should be given to parents and our children. For example, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) should come up with a programme which encourages people to eat healthy and practise healthy living, so that we can cut down on many diseases that are associated with malnutrition and the kind of lifestyles that we adopt. Especially, when we think that we are wealthy, we tend to eat, for example, foodstuffs that eventually destroy our health as we grow older. Sometimes, we do not discover that, indeed, we are suffering from diseases that are due to the kind of lives that we have led, until we are 40, 50 or 60 years old. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to speak about plastics, because the Minister mentioned about malaria and the fact that it is still a big killer. I do not want to be quoted as having said that plastics is the reason why we have malaria. That would be wrong. What I would like to say is that when we have these flimsy plastics, which, fortunately, have now been banned by the Minister for Finance - and which I hope we shall continue to avoid in our lives - that are used once and then thrown into the environment, what happens is that when it rains, they become excellent habitats for water to collect and mosquitoes to breed in. So, one way in which we can fight malaria is by destroying habitats where mosquitoes breed. I remember, one of the lessons that I learnt when I was in primary school was that we should remove empty cans and anything empty that will retain water, because mosquitoes breed in stagnant water. So, one of the reasons we should get rid of plastics is that when they are thrown into the environment, they do encourage the creation of those habitats where mosquitoes breed. Again, going back to our primary eduction, I think learning how to live healthy lives should also be learning how to manage and keep our environment clean. One way of doing this is by getting rid of any stagnant water, including empty cans and plastics in which water collects when it rains. It is very encouraging to know that the Ministry has given so many mosquito nets, especially, for the kids. I know that this makes a lot of difference. I hope that more mosquito nets will be made available. But much more important, as a long-term measure to control malaria, we need to improve the cleanliness of our environment. I know that we do not give enough attention to that aspect, as a people. This is because we can live next to a dump site with many plastics, and nobody thinks about it. But we are prepared to spend money to buy mosquito nets, Dichloro- Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) and other pesticides. We do not make the linkage between these July 31, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2851 plastics and the possibility that they are going to provide breeding habitats for mosquitoes. So, I would like the Ministry to focus on these measures, that are part of preventive medicine. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}