The Public Health Department in Kirinyaga County has put area residents on high alert over a possible cholera outbreak.
Already, there is a reported cholera outbreak in neighbouring Muranga and Kiambu counties leading to the red alert.
Public Health Officers in the county have been mobilised to carry out a massive sensitization campaign to ensure the killer disease is prevented from striking the residents.
The Department is also using mounted public systems to pass the message to as many residents as possible.
The public is being impressed to ensure washing hands before taking a meal and to only drink clean water.
Other areas being targeted are eateries where operators have been asked to ensure strict observance of hygiene in their premises.
But most significantly, residents have been cautioned to desist from eating cooked food which is being hawked in most urban Centres under unhygienic conditions.
An official who did not wish to be named said hawked foods were risky due to the environment under which such business was being conducted.
“We are also cautioning the residents to keep away from maize roasted and retailed in open dusty places in urban centers where dirt blown by wind lands on such food,” the official said.
Fruit and fresh juice vendors have also been put on notice since their raw material requires a lot of washing with clean water or being dispensed from clean glasses, standard many hawkers cannot attain.
The prevailing drought is also a factor that has been cited as a means through which the disease rapidly spreads.
Other sensitive areas include tea, porridge, sausage, and boiled eggs hawking which is retailed along the roads and open places without observing strict hygiene as required.
During the evening, meat and chapati hawkers invade the town and urban areas where the delicacies are served in open places while the source of such meat remains unknown.
The county government has been blamed by traders in the hospitality industry for allowing hawkers to compete with them while such hawkers do not pay any licenses.
“We are subjected to undue competition from the hawkers who sell or retail the very commodities we sell in our hotels and this habit is killing our business,” a trader who sought anonymity said.
By Irungu Mwangi
