VOICES TANZANIA

The CS also launched the Prototype County Environmental Health and Sanitation Bill, and the National ODF Kenya 2020 Campaign Framework.

The national policy and the strategic framework are aligned to the Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 on ensuring access to sanitation services and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030 while building on the progress and lessons learnt from the Millennium Development Goals.

These documents spell out key measures necessary to achieve sustained sanitation and hygiene service delivery in Kenya, including the elimination of open defecation by 2020.

The Open Defecation Free Campaign was initiated in 2007, and so far 3,369 out of 63,993 villages have been declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) and the Ministry hopes to reach all villages by 2020, the Director of Public Health, Dr. Kepha Ombacho, has said.

The Director said the objective of KESHP is to increase the proportion of the population with access to improved sanitation to 100 percent by 2030 and ensure a clean and healthy environment for all in Kenya.

Currently, the ministry is focusing on eight strategic areas to achieve the sanitation goal, he elaborates.

“scaling up access to improved rural and urban sanitation, assuring clean and healthy environment free from public nuisances, fostering private sector participation and investment in sanitation, building governance and leadership capacity for sanitation and sustainable financing and investment for sanitation.’’

Other areas are building enabling legal and regulatory environment, establishing an effective research and development framework for sanitation and strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems for the sanitation sector.

Dr. Ombacho has affirmed that the policy documents have been distributed to 42 out of the 47 counties and content has been shared with County Executive Committee Members for Health and the Chairpersons of the County assembly health committees.

‘’Dissemination meetings have been held with civil Society and three regional meetings have been scheduled with county health representatives to discuss the implementation plans,’’ Dr. Ombacho disclosed.

The Ministry together with stakeholders in the WASH sector is currently in the process of developing a popular version of the four documents. This are abridged versions of the documents that will be distributed to members of the public. The Ministry is also working on a Sanitation Bill that will be presented to the Cabinet and later to parliament.

The Kenya Environmental Sanitation and Hygiene Policy and the strategic framework are in line with the Government’s commitment to provide excellent, high quality healthcare to all Kenyans.

Sanitation underpins a range of human rights and social, economic and cultural freedoms which includes the right to a clean and healthy environment; the right to the highest attainable standard of health; the right to accessible and adequate housing, food of acceptable quality, clean and safe water of adequate quantity; the right to education; the right to life; the right to equality; the right to privacy; and the right to human dignity.

The Director of Public Health said the Ministry of Health is committed to keeping people safe from environmental hazards and is working to promote a healthy environment.

‘’Your environment is everything around you—the air you breathe, the water you drink, the places where your food is grown or prepared, your workplace, and your home. When your environment is safe and healthy, you are more likely to stay healthy,’’ he stresses.

Environmental sanitation envisages promotion of health of the community by providing clean environment and breaking the cycle of disease. It depends on various factors that include hygiene status of the people, types of resources available, innovative and appropriate technologies according to the requirement of the community, socioeconomic development of the country, cultural factors related to environmental sanitation, political commitment, capacity building of the concerned sectors, social factors including behavioral pattern of the community, legislative measures adopted, and others.

In collaboration with key stakeholders, the Ministry is set to build a progressive, responsive and sustainable technologically-driven, evidence-based and client-centered health system for accelerated attainment of the highest standard of health to all Kenyans.

A cross-section of school teachers and students who were interviewed by this paper said the school is afflicted with myriads of challenges, including lack of electricity, shortage of teaching staff and classrooms which are in bad shape.

They added that the school environment is inhospitable and unsociable to both teachers and their students. Vice-Head of the School, Mr Calisto Mapunda, admitted that students at the school fetch water directly from Lake Tanganyika and use it for domestic purposes and worse still they drink it without boiling.

“Despite such challenges, the school has no science teacher, which compels some of us to teach the subjects including biology, mathematics, physics and chemistry in Form One and Two because it is compulsory for them (students) to study all the nine subjects. The school has only nine teachers, all of them are teaching art subjects,” added Mr Mapunda. Expounding further, he said that class-rooms are in bad shape with rough floors, some of them have neither doors nor windows and the walls have developed huge cracks.

On his part, Mr Chaua Zawadi, a history and civic subject teacher at the school said that even the parents and people living in the school vicinity have abandoned the school, with the opinion that it is the government’s responsibility to run and manage it.

“The schools surroundings are infested with different species of snakes including cobra, such reptiles are a threat to the lives of the students, for instance, the boys’ dormitory has no doors …. Equally Lake Tanganyika is also infested with crocodiles which can easily attack students when they are either fetching water or swimming,” said Mr Zawadi.

Similar sentiments were echoed by several students, including Loveness Chaula, Manuel Kamanki, Hosana Kalikula and Joseph Kakunda, who added that it is very pit that they are forced to sleep on the floor in their dormitories due to shortage of beds.

Reposted 

According to a statement, this first-of-its-kind multi-country collaborative cassava breeding initiative in East and Southern Africa is part of a major activity of the new cassava varieties and clean seed to combat CBSD and CMD (5CP) project which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.