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{
"id": 928633,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/928633/?format=api",
"text_counter": 437,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
"slug": "moses-wetangula"
},
"content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, you will remember that in the olden days, cancer was largely associated with smoking. Cigarette packets were even labelled “smoking causes cancer,” “smoking kills,” and so on, and so forth. A serious campaign was mounted against smoking. However, I hardly hear anybody relate the new cancers that we are talking about to smoking now. We are now hearing of children, as young as one or two years old and middle-aged people dying of cancer. Likewise, teenagers and very old people are dying of cancer. When you look at what is causing it, you cannot quite get it. We are being told that we are eating carcinogenic materials that are causing cancer. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, Africa has become a supermarket economy that has then degenerated into a dumping ground. What others do not want or do not eat; or that which they discard is finding its way into African shelves for us to buy. This is because the elite of Africa are so obsessed with imported goods, foodstuff, and whatever else. We are buying junk from supermarkets, and nobody wants to eat arrow roots, sweet potatoes or fresh bananas from our fields. We are busy buying bananas grown in the Caribbean, processed in laboratories in Europe and dumped in Africa. Nobody wants to go to the supermarket to buy oranges from Makueni or from Lake Naivasha. We want to buy oranges brought in from Israel, Brazil, Argentina or New Zealand without asking ourselves how they have been preserved, processed or how they found their way here. This cancer situation must be looked at very seriously. I do not think there is sufficient research going on to tell Kenyans what exposes people to cancer. This morning, I went to see a professor of Medicine at the Nairobi Hospital to book an appointment to see a friend who is unwell. I engaged him on cancer, and asked him whether cancer is a real problem or an escape route for medical incompetence. This is because it appears in some situations where what doctors cannot explain becomes cancer. When we take that route, we convolute the situation to the level where it is difficult to detect, treat and prevent it. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we know that in medicine – and Sen. (Dr.) Ali, being a doctor, can tell us – the emphasis is more on preventive rather than curative. This is because the curative processes are expensive. They have got serious issues. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do not know if you have read a book by a French author called Molière, The Imaginary Invalid. The good doctor says that most people do not die from diseases they suffer from, but from complications arising out of the treatment of the diseases they suffer from. This is true, because right now, the quickest escape route for people who suffer from cancer is chemotherapy. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I remember when I was the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, I had a very close counterpart in the Ministry, the late Job Omino. He was a vibrant, strong, tall, energetic and straight gentleman. However, he went down sick for one month, and the doctors put him on chemotherapy. When I went to see him, I was shocked beyond belief because I could not even notice that this was the Job Omino I knew. His entire hair and beard had dropped off. Mark you, it was not shaved off, but dropped off. He was there looking different, and I have seen many other people who go through the same process. You go for treatment and doctors will tell you that chemotherapy is not the only process of dealing with cancer. Why then put people on chemotherapy, which will cause that kind of repercussions? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, even if you had the will to live, you are put on that chemotherapy, and in two or three days, you wake up and find that you have no hair or"
}