It is mostly about potable water. In urban areas, people should actually get running water, but they don’t. Now they get it only once or twice a week. Then the pipes run dry for many days. When pipes are dry there are things growing there and so when water comes, it carries them. So there’s a risk of contamination.
Also, most people store water in tanks. But they need to take care. Most of those tanks are dirty with mud. They need to be cleaned regularly, at least twice a year. Actually constantly running water is best because there is little risk of contaminants growing in the pipes.
Boiling drinking water is not very effective. To truly kill all microbes, you want to boil for 10 minutes. If you bring it to a rolling boil for only a minute or less, which is what most people do, you kill a few things but not everything.
In Nairobi, the water doesn’t even boil at 100 degrees like in Mombasa. The other disadvantage of boiling is that if this water is chlorinated, the chlorine will evaporate.
One more effective way is to store the boiled water in a clay pot and cover it overnight. It is very effective. Things die when covered and the temperature drops. Also keeping boiled water in the fridge is effective.
In rural areas and slums, people use pit latrines. If people have shallow wells, there’s a risk of contamination. If you use this as drinking water, then you need to treat it with chlorine or put it in a clay pot and let it stay overnight.
Diarrhoea diseases spread quickly so handwashing is very important to break the cycle.
Heavy rains will also bring the risk of vectorborne diseases. Mombasa has had outbreaks of Dengue alongside malaria. Dengue has come back and it's worse than malaria. Nairobi has been malaria-free for long but it has come back. With climate change, some of these diseases will come back.
This means stagnant water should be gotten rid of in the estates. People should be proactive about this. This should be a community effort. Mosquitoes come 10-14 days after rains start so from mid-October we should begin to see more insects. To prevent this, people must take these precautions and also cut tall grass.
Lecturer at the School of Public Health, University of Nairobi
