Hustlers fear cholera may bring back curfew whip

The Ministry of Health is warning of a frightening cholera outbreak in at least six counties, at the time of going to press.

But you wouldn’t know from the way Kenyans are shouting about the political crisis in the United Kingdom, ending up spraying saliva across bar tables in last-ditch efforts to catch the eye of the speaker playing loud music.

Dr Patrick Amoth, the acting Director-General of Health, has cautioned that the cholera outbreak may worsen as a result of the ongoing drought.

He hasn’t advised Kenyans to save water by showering with a friend, leaving that to relationship experts in the spirit of providing job opportunities to every hustler.

For more than three centuries, cholera has withstood unfair accusations of being a disease of the poor. 

However, it has since changed with the times to be an equal opportunity illness stalking the rich in lavish places, as happened in the Kiambu case that has been traced to a wedding in Limuru.

We have just come from a debilitating Covid-19 lockdown, where businesses were shutdown, employees laid off, properties auctioned and Kenyans whipped for helping the government look for jobs.

You would’ve expected that the prospect of another health pandemic would make the government call a crisis meeting to get ahead of the spread and chop off its head.

But all indications are that we have better chances waiting for the second coming of Jesus.

Out of control

It’s in the interest of the new regime to press their knee on the neck of this new health emergency before it assumes formlessness and wiggles out of control.

While the previous government hid behind the international nature of the Covid-19 pandemic to tip-toe their way out of responsibility, this one is unapologetically local.

Kenyans might look interested in stories of how Uhuru Kenyatta left you with nothing to eat in the granary, until you accuse him of sending cholera to make your government look bad.

The good news is that the new government already has a pandemic gold standard to derive their surveillance template from.

The bad news is that when it comes to developing innovative ideas to protect our citizens from health pandemics, even those running innovation labs would rather stick to tendering for roads being built in the air.

This is because tender committees love things they can see, a situation that demands that those defending cholera surveillance budgets must factor in the cost of hiring microscopes that can speak, as a short-term measure.

The long-term intervention is to amend the nomination and elections rules to include microscopes among the list of Kenya’s marginalised groups, paving the way for their nomination to Parliament to go speak for those in the disease surveillance field, hoping that all MPs studied Biology and can correctly pronounce vibrio cholerae.

The Ministry of Health says that what worries them the most is the likelihood of the cholera outbreak going full-blown in Nairobi; and you can see why.

Nairobi is where all roads in this country terminate at. All the 47 governors live with their children who study here, and the Ministry of Health has refused to caution Nairobi residents against eating with governors from the six affected counties, as that would mean denying them access to political handouts.

During this difficult period when money is difficult to come by, anyone advising hustlers not to interact with potential cholera transmitters risks being accused of not supporting the new government’s agenda of putting money in every hustler’s pocket.

Science says that up to 80 per cent of cholera patients can be treated successfully through prompt administration of oral rehydration salts.

The remaining 20 per cent who don’t survive will have to rely on those left behind to ask the new Health Cabinet Secretary trouble-free questions while smiling at her net worth.

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