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{
    "id": 962573,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/962573/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 215,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Gilgil, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Martha Wangari",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13123,
        "legal_name": "Martha Wangari",
        "slug": "martha-wangari"
    },
    "content": "detection of cancer. Unless we are able to do that, we will keep yapping and it will just be a talk show. I am very apprehensive of Motions in this House. This goes to the Committee on Implementation. We pass Motions in this House, but how do we follow up to ensure that they are implemented? If it is a Bill, it becomes part of the laws of the country. If it is a Motion, people talk to it and it just stops there. I hope that we get the Committee on Implementation to follow up this matter. Recently, the country ran out of polio vaccine. Can you imagine that happened? You would go to hospitals and they would say the vaccine is not available, maybe because we are over-dependent on donors or for lack of better planning. We are endangering a whole generation when we joke with vaccination. We hope that this HPV vaccination could be included with others, even meningitis vaccine which is very expensive to access. If we are able to look at the school-going children, we will be able to save generations. The other issue is to the county governments. I know they are struggling with issues of Recurrent Expenditure, but I hope we will eventually implement the Abuja Declaration so that not less than 15 per cent of the county allocations go to health. That will ensure that the random check-ups some governors are organising are continuous. If you do check-ups once because there is a lot of noise in the media and some high-flying people have died, after two to three weeks that story dies off. It should be a continuous process. I am also looking at the other techniques that we can use to detect cancer, like Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan, which is a nuclear imaging technique. It is only one hospital that has it in this country and it costs Kshs100,000. We are talking of people who live on less than US$1 a day. How many can afford Kshs100,000 in order to go through a body check-up to see whether you have cancer? It will not be possible. I pray that, even as we pass Motions in this House, we are able to do an overview, a global look, not just for HPV, but for every other cancer so that we are able to prevent more than cure. This will also make it manageable in cases where it has gone beyond cure. That touches on palliative care. I am saying that because I have had a cancer patient. The pain gets to some level that it is almost impossible to bear. Palliative care is where you will need a nurse to come to your home because keeping patients in the hospitals will not add more life to them. I know many families have suffered when it gets to that level. Palliative care needs education. Doctors need to tell people the truth. Even the chemotherapy we are using, we need to do proper investigation to see whether it is the right one, so that we can advise patients. At some level of cancer, chemotherapy will just worsen the situation; I am told as much. It is not just about impoverishing families. As it is today, you spend everything. You sell your property like land and livestock, but the patient ends up passing on even after going broke and suffering in the hands of this monster. I hope we can invest more on research in this disease. I hope the universities can also take it up in terms of study and research so that they can advise the government and the Ministry of Health on how we can do better screening, treatment and palliative care to cancer patients. With those few remarks, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I beg to support. Next is Hon. Kasalu."
}