Beware, Cholera is back - Kagwe

The Ministry of Health has announced an outbreak of Cholera in Nairobi’s Kamukunji area.

The number of reported cases remains unclear, but Health CS Mutahi Kagwe has attributed the outbreak to failure by Kenyans to adhere to simple hygienic measures such as hand washing.

“Because sanitizing is out in some cases, because people are no longer wearing masks and so on, cholera is back in case you didn't know. We have a bit of an outbreak of cholera in Kamukunji," Kagwe said 

"I have absolutely no doubt at the height of the Covid-19, there would have been no cholera because everyone would have been washing their hands and sanitizing,” he added.

Cholera is an acute diarrhea illness caused by infection of the intestine with vibrio cholerae bacteria.

People can get sick when they swallow food or water contaminated with the bacteria.

The infection is often mild or without symptoms, but can sometimes be severe and life-threatening.

Symptoms in the early stages of infection include profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, loss of skin elasticity, dry mucous membranes, low blood pressure, thirst, muscle cramps and restlessness or irritability.

Kagwe said we need a paradigm shift in the way that we tackle healthcare in the country in relation to infectious illnesses.

“These prevention measures and the way we tackle healthcare in our country is something that we need to change," the CS said.

Amidst the dark cloud that compounded its arrival, the Covid-19 presented a silver lining in terms of commendable community behavior change where people increasingly exercised hand hygiene.

As a result, the country significantly reduced incidents of killer diseases such as diarrhea in children aged below five years, acute respiratory diseases in all age sets and intestinal worms among school age children.

This, however, changed following the relaxation of the Covid-19 containment measures.

Kenyans have dropped their guard as they no longer felt that the virus posed any form of danger to them.

On Wednesday, Kagwe presided over the graduation of 48 Kenyan specialists in family medicine from Cuba.

Kenya has been trying to borrow from the Cuban healthcare system which focuses on primary healthcare as opposed to secondary healthcare with the family medicine programme being at the core.

Cuba has placed emphasis on the availability of healthcare by ensuring that it has sufficient healthcare professionals with emphasis on prevention of diseases at the primary level.