Cholera outbreaks should be a source of national shame

Tents erected at Homa Bay County Referral Hospital to handle cholera patients on January 9, 2023. [File, Standard]

Reports of multiple cases of cholera across the country are troubling. Several people have died.

Yet the government does not seem capable of rising to the occasion on the matter.

It has become widely accepted that the beginning of the rainy season brings with it cholera - as if we are living in an 18th century time capsule.

It should be a source of national shame that, in this day and age, our people still contract and die of cholera.

Here, we should lay the blame squarely on our public health experts and policymakers. The seasonality of cholera suggests that with concerted effort we can break the cycle.

It is also true that cases tend to be spatially located, which should facilitate focused treatment and eradication. And yet we seem to sit on our hands year in year out, and wait to be surprised by outbreaks.

These outbreaks are not acts of God. They are purely manmade failures.

On this score, the biggest failure of all is our continuing inability to build a system of reliable piped water and sewerage management.

It boggles the mind that water management remains not at the top of the agenda - not for food production in our farms and certainly not for household usage.

We just do not seem to care.

And yet it is one of the most important inputs across the board. This is to say that the cholera outbreaks do not just highlight public health failures, they also give us a glimpse of the overall capacity of the Kenyan state.

For all of recorded history, water management has been a core function of most states. Cities around the world are proud of their water works. Individual politicians take pride in building these projects.

However, for some reason in Kenya our politicians could not care less about water works.

They are satisfied digging boreholes and building septic tanks for themselves and exposing their own families to contaminated water.

Our enduring tragedy as a people is that we are led by individuals who do not care enough about their own personal wellbeing or that of their families.

Their priorities are completely upside down. You will find "big men" who drive big cars and wear expensive suits but who are merely one degree of separation from a cholera infection.

Their guards, drivers, cooks, all play footsie with cholera and other waterborne diseases on a daily basis. This is no way to live.

-The writer is a professor at Georgetown University