Government's silence could fuell spread of Mpox

The Ministry of Health has confirmed 1,298 Mpox cases and 19 deaths across 40 counties, with Mombasa, Nairobi and Busia recording the highest incidence. Seven counties along the transport corridor remain at elevated risk. These figures represent a public health emergency of considerable seriousness. Yet for the majority of Kenyans, this information arrives as news.

Herein lies the main failure. The virus itself is not within the government's power to eliminate by decree. The absence of sustained public communication, however, is a failure of policy and execution for which the Ministry bears direct responsibility. Effective disease control depends on an informed and cooperative public. A citizen in Busia or Kilifi cannot be expected to exercise vigilance against a threat the state hasn't explained.

The government's own record offers an instructive precedent. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Health maintained a discipline of daily communication. The Cabinet Secretary appeared before the public each evening, presenting case figures, outlining precautions and reporting the toll with consistency. That practice established a standard of transparency the public came to expect as a baseline obligation of government during periods of contagion.

That standard has since lapsed. The relative unfamiliarity of Mpox, compared with the alarm generated by Covid-19, appears to have engendered complacency within the relevant institutions, even as the disease continues to claim lives. Nineteen deaths ought not be reduced to a statistic circulated quietly during press briefings once a month. Each represents a family that might reasonably have expected clearer and more consistent communication from the state.

The Health Principal Secretary's appeal for enhanced surveillance, vaccination and hygiene is, in substance, appropriate. Guidance issued intermittently, however, to a public that has not been prepared to receive it, achieves limited effect. If the government intends to curb the spread of Mpox, and to pre-empt the introduction of Ebola given Kenya's status as a regional transport hub, it must restore sustained public communication as a central feature of its response rather than a peripheral gesture.

The public requires information delivered with regularity and candour, sufficient to allow citizens to protect themselves. This obligation rests squarely with the Health ministry.