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{
"id": 6819,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/6819/?format=api",
"text_counter": 377,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Mututho",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 97,
"legal_name": "John Michael Njenga Mututho",
"slug": "john-mututho"
},
"content": "Lead stuff is now available either in used cartridges. Whose uses bullets? It is the Government itself, anyway. Again, you are exposing the masses to a big hazard from this heavy metal called lead. So, the Government cannot shy away from this. What I would really call for is cleaning up your table after dinning because they have done this mess. We have watched them. We have looked at them. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, when you look at the same Government, particularly the Executive, for that matter, and you start talking about things like aflatoxin, they take it as if it is a joke. But everybody knows; even a first year medicine student knows that some of aflatoxin within about ten or 15 years. When we say here on the Floor of the House about the GMO causing mutants, all at the very least is able to cause some cancerous growth in any one organ within your body. Again, the Government side goes on slumber and uses flimsy excuses like there is drought even when people are planting. But they would like to have GMOs around us for profitability and ignoring all these issues that we are putting across. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, there are many things that the Government can do. There is noise pollution in matatu terminuses and on the highways like Thika Highway that we are trying to do now. One of the standard finishings of a highway is that you must put a solid wall which will first of all stop noise pollution. Noise in itself can cause one form of cancer or another through the vibrations that are not very natural to the body. Now, look at the design of the new roads and none of it addresses the issue of noise pollution. Nobody, until every recently, including the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) ever though that you can also regulate the amount of noise from motor vehicles and so on. I do not want to talk about the smoking cars because that is more than obvious. Again, it is the Government. So, the Government from the start to the end must now come to this very dirty table, put in money where it is needed; the place into which to put money is none other than this cancer institute. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to go straight to some things which are rather shameful. We sit here and admire our women left, right and centre. We sit here with them. We help to mould them year in year out but we are too shy to talk about cervical cancer. We are too shy to believe that they are dying of cervical cancer. We sit here and see them suffer every day because of such conditions as breast cancer, which could have been diagnosed early enough. Up until now, even when we have a Kshs1.5 trillion Budget, why has somebody really in the Executive - I believe my brother is here, the one in charge of the Nairobi Metropolitan Development, the big city which has become a metropolitan - not come up with a national breast and cervical cancer treatment centre specific to women? It is painful because most of the people who are going to die of cervical cancer will not be men but women, although there will be a few men. It is painful because women have been nursing men to stay alive by preparing vegetables to keep chemicals away. It is the women who suffer. We can reward them by doing something in this Budget. Forget about the Ministry of Health budget, but within our spending power, instead of buying, or doing most of these luxurious things--- We learnt today that the amount of money that will go into building our roads will run into impossible figures; but we should put up a national cervical and breast cancer treatment centre where diagnosis can be done and treatment, particularly radiotherapy, can be enhanced. Madam Temporary Speaker, treatment of cancer is expensive, and we all agree to that. Chemotherapy can be made cheaper if we support local manufacturers like the ones from India and China. Why do we shy away? Why do we still need to import those things? Most of the ingredients, as you pointed out at one stage, some of these products can also be home made. Let us also look at our own situation and see if it works; if we doubted, what I would say is that I have also witnessed a very important patient to me, but not a very close relative--- He had a cancer, a big growth in a small duct between the liver and the small intestines, which was very complicated. There was a very big tumour. Everybody thought that it was terminal case and everything was going to end in death. But because the patient could afford certain preparations, both conventional medicine and also some derived from our own medicine here, it cleared from not only that place but also from the whole body. They could not trace cancer anywhere. This is a real story and I can give real data. The person today does not have any cancer at all; but remember they had to go through a lot of chemotherapy. The other thing is that they could afford particular medicine. Most of medicine is exaggerated by some of these pharmacological factories. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, what I am saying is that as we look at short- term solutions, and now that we know that cancer is here in such a huge quantity that we can no longer avoid it, we should also now encourage private investors to give priority and manufacture these preparations locally whether you are a multinational or not be domiciled in Kenya to reduce on the cost."
}