{"id":806071,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/806071/?format=json","text_counter":134,"type":"other","speaker_name":"","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. I rise to give my condolences and on behalf of Kisii County to the County of Migori that is our close neighbour. We share a common border, common facilities and a common road. Sen. Okello was a wonderful man who was full of fortitude and always stood his ground. He always stood on the right side of things. If there was something that he did not like, he would openly say it; he did that many times. In my recent memory, when we were going through the usual political nominations and elections last year, he kept on sending me messages complaining about the way, in our party, we were not doing one or two things in the right way. As we kept on communicating, I figured that he had a strong conviction that he would win the Migori County senate seat. Those who had underrated him did not know the power of the people of Migori County who ended up electing him with a landslide victory to this Senate. I remember during the campaign period, he would cross over to my county with his campaign team to strategise for the next move on how the elections will be. Recently in this House, he sat in that little corner, quiet but deep in thoughts. What has taken the life of Sen. Okello away is the cancer menace. It is a menace in this country. From my previous knowledge, I know, we used to categorise the obvious and common diseases that wiped out Kenyans as diarrhea and vomiting, infectious diseases and others. Cancer was below the top ten diseases. Of late, this country has had a surge in cancer cases. In fact, today, in Kenya, cancer is number one in terms of prevalence rates, therefore, requiring enormous costs and expenses in dealing with it. As you may all know, cancer is a disease where the normal body cells are affected by a trigger of carcinogenic agents. When these agents hit a certain part of the body, the body will try to respond in a protective manner. When it does so, unfortunately the situation gets out of hand because of abnormal proliferation of cells that do not perform any work that is useful to the body thus becoming inefficient and cancerous. There are many carcinogenic agents that have been pinned down through food or elements such as mercury. I want to say this with a heavy heart. One of the delicacies on peoples’ table is sugar. When you have incomplete processing of sugar, you will have a product that has not gone through proper processing. As we know, mercury is needed as part of this processing to moderate the pH of sugar. When this is incompletely done, you will be left with a colourless and odourless substance called mercury chloride which is toxic and carcinogenic to the body. Therefore, the stories about sugar that is not properly processed being found in or markets raises a moral question. The fundamental question is: are we feeding our people with carcinogenic agents? This is not to claim that, that is the only cause, but it is a The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"}