Residents urged to enhance personal hygiene

Members of public have a crucial role to play in upholding personal hygiene at the household level.
A medical practitioner Dr. Paul Karau speaking during a public participation forum on enhancing disease protection initiatives in Meru county advised residents not to always look upon the national and county government to provide solutions to their health problems.
Dr. Karau said Kenyans have continually contributed to food and water contamination in their day to day socio- economic activities, which he cited as the main cause of diseases especially bacterial.
The medic said the government had put in place adequate legislation on how a people can ensure their environment was disease free.
He appealed to members of the public to actively participate and compliment all initiatives geared towards promoting and sustaining a healthy population.
At the same time, Dr. Karau regretted that most of the waste getting into water sources was originating from agricultural farms, garages among other livelihood activities, yet people insist on blaming the government for escalated cases of bacterial related diseases.
He urged those entrusted with enforcing existing laws on how to keep the environment clean and safe for human beings to be more diligent in the way they carry out their duty execution for a healthy nation in future.
Dr. Karau dismissed a common belief that all bottled water was safe for human consumption, while cautioning that some the people involved in the business were purely out to make money, with very little concern or none at all on the effects the product would have on the consumers.
He also regretted that Kenyans were carelessly engaged in environmental degradation activities for personal gains at the expense of the larger population, only to spend much of their earnings on drugs to treat preventable health conditions.
The medic challenged players in the medical fraternity against commercializing and taking advantage on emerging health conditions to exploit the public.
Dr. Karau had an issue with how some medics were handling the adamant H-pylori bacteria saying almost every patient was testing positive to the condition, which was the only one found with the potential to cause stomach cancer if not well handled.
He further appealed to his colleagues in the health sector to be more mindful of the patients’ welfare other than focusing on how much they make from the services provided saying over usage of the same H-pylori bacteria treatment drug was likely to cause drug resistance, thus risking life of the patient.
“I pray and wish that all of us in the medical field would have the welfare of our patients at heart above the money we are likely to make from them,” Dr. Karau added.
By Makaa Margaret