Opinion and Analysis
Members of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) put on protective gear at the
isolation ward of the Donka Hospital, on July 23, 2014 in Conakry,
Guinea. AFP PHOTO|CELLOU BINANI
By Bitange Ndemo
In Summary
- We have more than enough human resources to ensure clean cities. What we perhaps need most is the collective will of the people to change their attitude and culture towards cleanliness.
Scenes of animals rummaging through garbage in our urban areas are increasingly becoming common.
A drive on the Northern Bypass between Githurai and Ruaka
reveals that it has become a dumping site in the absence of proper
sanitation for informal settlers. Rats, pigs and goats share the filth
in broad daylight. Unknown to Africa is the long-term effect of ignoring
hygiene.
This is perhaps why the UN Special Rapporteur on
the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de
Albuquerque urged, the government to transform the constitutional rights
to water and sanitation into a reality for the millions of Kenyans who
do not enjoy these fundamental human rights.
Albuquerque said Kenya loses Sh29 billion due to
premature deaths and expenditure on healthcare. She said 13 per cent of
the population defecate in the open, and in Turkana over 80 per cent of
the population practise open defecation.
She emphasised that “this is not only an absolute
denial of the right to sanitation, but also a serious threat to public
health and the security of women and girls who have to walk into the
bush at night. These women and girls are exposed to daily risks due to
the lack of proper sanitation”.
Strangely, we never relate these hygiene issues to
the increasing outbreaks of deadly viral diseases like Ebola. In the
14th century, Europe suffered many viral disease outbreaks (different
forms of plague) leading to one of the most devastating pandemics in
human history that came to be known as Black Death after it decimated
nearly 200 million people.
It wasn’t until the 19th century when the
importance of hygiene was recognised. Until then, it was common, as
Wikimedia reports, to find filthy streets with live animals roaming and
human parasites abounding.
A transmissible disease spreads easily in such
conditions. This was validated by BBC’s Dan Snow in Medieval London. The
filth led to much disease, and there was no understanding on how
disease spread.
Fed up with recurring epidemics, the Europeans
decided to change course and as Snow reports, “through the plague people
became much more community-minded and focused on cleaning up the city.
Interestingly, the muck and grime of the city helped form the nature of
the city today. Londoners learnt that they needed to work together to
create a metropolis that was not only wealthy, but liveable”.
The difference between 14th century Europe and
Africa today is the outwardly lack of acceptance of our collective will
to deal with filth in our urban centres. This could be the cause of the
many diseases that we experience today.
It is not due to lack of money or labour that we
are choking in garbage. Most cities are able to collect land rates and
use the resource to keep their cities clean. Even without revenue
collection, there are sufficient devolved funds in Constituency
Development Fund or other county devolved funds.
We have more than enough human resources to ensure
clean cities. What we perhaps need most is the collective will of the
people to change their attitude and culture towards cleanliness.
To improve our situation we need to start campaigns
against careless disposal of waste and imaginably develop a cleanliness
index tied to some reward; step up efforts to inform, educate and
communicate benefits of effective sanitation to minimise the problem
while we seek to innovatively create new eco-friendly disposal products;
willing to learn from startups like Sanergy (sanitation experts turning
waste into value in Mukuru slums), innovations around waste management;
and scale up Kibra pilot projects on converting waste into energy.
Like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Water,
Sanitation and Hygiene programme, we must see the opportunity in
developing innovative approaches and technologies that can lead to
radical and sustainable improvements in sanitation.
In the foundation’s words, “improving how we deal
with human waste, we can save lives, improve child health, and ensure
greater dignity, privacy, and personal safety, particularly for women
and girls.
Better sanitation also contributes to economic development, delivering up to $5 in social and economic benefits for every $1 invested through increased productivity, reduced healthcare costs, and prevention of illness, disability, and early death.”
Better sanitation also contributes to economic development, delivering up to $5 in social and economic benefits for every $1 invested through increased productivity, reduced healthcare costs, and prevention of illness, disability, and early death.”
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As Barry Commoner said, “Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented”.
The writer is a Senior Lecturer, University of
Nairobi and a former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and
Communication.
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