yazilimweb tasarim

September 2016

Monthly Archives

Date Posted: September 30, 2016
0 Comments

Victory for paediatric TB patients with unveiling of friendly drugs

Black girl

My padlock was ruined. Mama Earnest would use it to crush the TB drugs that Earnest was taking. You would want to ask how old Earnest was. He was only 9 months old. 9 painful months. Earnest had TB. Over 9 tablets daily had to be crushed, dissolved, then forced down Earnest’s throat, leaving his clothes stained red with the pigment of the spills.

You see, it was not his fault to be born with HIV, neither was his mother’s fault. He had to take the whole course of TB medication for six months. Earnest fought like a champion. Unfortunately, he lost the battle.

Today when I see the Kenyan Ministry of Health announcing the launch of appropriately dosed, child-friendly tuberculosis (TB) medicines, I get exhilarated. This makes Kenya the first country in the world to roll out these products nationally.

The improved medicines are easier for caregivers to give and for children to take, and are expected to help improve treatment and child survival from TB.

Tuberculosis still remains a major killer of children. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 1 million children suffer from TB each year and 140,000 children die of this preventable, treatable and curable disease. In 2015, Kenya reported nearly 7,000 cases of TB in infants and children, with those under age five at greatest risk of having severe forms of TB and dying from the disease. Earnest numbered among the statistics in 2015.

Previously, caregivers like Mama Earnest, had to cut or crush multiple, bitter-tasting pills in an attempt to achieve the right doses for children. This made the six-month treatment journey difficult for children and their families, contributing to treatment failure and death from the disease.Who knows, whether he was deprived from the correct dosage due to the spills?

The treatments now being introduced are the first to meet the WHO’s guidelines for childhood TB treatment. They are not new drugs, but improved formulations that come in the correct doses, require fewer pills, are flavoured and dissolve in water.

The development of the medicines was overseen by TB Alliance, an international non-profit organization, and was funded by UNITAID and other partners.

Starting October 1, 2016, all children in Kenya who will be initiated on TB treatment will be given the improved formulation.

Children often get TB from infected persons in their environment. This can be at home, at school or in any other place where they spend their time. Children should be taken to the nearest health facility to receive a TB diagnosis if they show symptoms of TB. These are coughs, fever, night sweats, reduced playfulness, or if they fail to gain weight. If any member of the household is diagnosed with TB, all other household members should be tested for TB, especially children. TB testing and treatment is free at all public health facilities in Kenya.

Date Posted: September 29, 2016
3 Comments

School Trips and the Slap that Wouldn’t Leave my Memories.

What are your memories of school trips? I remember the slap landing squarely on my small face, the thud it had, the fingerprints that were imprinted on my cheek. I still remember how he grabbed at my grey sweater from the back, his nails digging into my flesh, before delivering the perfectly timed slap. I still remember it years later.

Yes, I can swear I even remember the madman’s smell. I can still see vividly his dirty tattered clothes, turned dark brown with oily patches of black. He was a scene to behold. Alarming to a little 10-year-old girl. It all happened so fast that the teachers we were with never saw it. Only my best friend Emily saw the scene. She saw me clutching at my face, still absorbing the shock. What did I do to deserve the slap? Heaven knows.

Maybe my face resembled the madman’s old enemy. Maybe I walked along the path marked as his territory, obstructing his fast-paced walking. Maybe that, because after delivering the slap, he immediately resumed his pace. He was gone. Cracks on the soles of his dirty bare feet hit the ground with loud thuds as he hurried away as if nothing had happened.

The beautiful school trip to Uhuru Park was suddenly ruined. At least for me. The teachers were with other students ahead of us. They didn’t witness the mad rage from the madman, who probably thought everyone else was mad, save from him. They didn’t witness the slap that left my face burning with pain and imprinted by the pattern of a hand that was by then several meters away.

Now, I remember taking many school trips. Like the one, we had to Seven Forks geothermal power stations when in class six. The huge turbines and weeping tunnels. What about the visit to Lake Naivasha? I remember the beautiful horizon dotted pink by flamingos. And before I forget, the culturally rich Bomas of Kenya with different traditional huts, topped up with performances from Maasai dancers.

And yes, I remember how I looked forward to those trips. You see, it was during school trips that my parents would go out of their way and buy all sorts of snacks. Oh! Those days of sharing. Every child was eager to share what they had packed for lunch. The more, the merrier.

Yet of all those good memories, this one memory stands prominently. The slap which seemed to stick on my face. The slap which no matter how hard I tried to wipe, just would not clear from my ten-year-old face. The slap which left me shaken to the point that I forgot to cry. The slap that left my best friend Emily equally shaken, but still trying to comfort me, the friend with whom she had been laughing with just minutes earlier.

That’s why it is always good to walk together in a group when you are on a school outing. That’s why teachers should never lose sight of their students when on a school trip. Something terrible might just happen, and destroy the good memories of school trips. Every time I walk through Uhuru Park along the path guarded by wire mesh, I still think that a madman may just appear out of the blue, grab me by the back of my sweater, and slap me again.

Date Posted: September 27, 2016
0 Comments

Tourism for All includes Locals as much as Foreigners

Image Courtesy of Capital FM

Image Courtesy of Capital FM

During this week’s team meeting, the ice breaker was interesting. Name your ideal holiday destination. Simple task it is right? Not when you are the one to start the round and come up with an inferior place like Mombasa, while other team members mention all sorts of fancy places around the world. I started doubting my answer when one by one, places like Greece, Maldives and France were mentioned.

Thinking my answer over later, I decided it was the best I had. Having traveled widely, I felt I hadn’t been loyal to my country as much because there are places in Kenya I haven’t set foot. Mombasa is one of those places. Kenya is a beautiful place that people travel from all over the world to come visit. Ironically, most Kenyans are not as much of domestic tourists. I found myself culpable of this.

27th September marks the World Tourism Day. It is a day set aside to foster awareness among the international community of the importance of tourism and its social, cultural, political and economic value. The 2016 theme is Tourism for All: Promoting Universal Accessibility. Accessible Tourism for all is about the creation of environments that can cater for the needs of all of us, whether we are traveling or staying at home.

Universal Accessibility can be viewed in terms of disability friendly, the aged or even small children. Are our tourism sites friendly to provide universal access? I think that’s a question I would leave open for the various tourism sites and tour operators to ponder.

My concern is that most Kenyans like me, may be having a notion that tourism is for the foreigners. We never know what we have at home until we go to other countries and find our indigenous animals for instance, in cages at foreign zoos. I have witnessed a couple of those- Giraffes, Hippos, and peacocks.

I have been on the London Eye, seen the Big Ben, visited the Calgary Zoo in Canada, been to Ottawa, the business capital of Canada, and to China, yet never to Mombasa? But I digress.

calgary-canada

Accessibility may not be an immediate issue, at least in Kenya, as much as embracing the idea of domestic tourism. I am of the opinion that to even tell whether our tourism sites are accessible, we should first experience them. Embracing domestic tourism needs to start at an early age. Activities like school trips ought to be embraced by parents because they contribute to children’s learning of their country.

Once in a while, just taking time off your busy schedule and taking family outings, visiting the museums, game parks, wildlife sanctuaries or even simple picnics can teach children a lot about their surroundings. Let’s get into this inquiry of whether our local tourism sites are really accessible, by experiencing them for ourselves. Come to think of it, who is to blame when children call a cow a big dog? Some of them have never even traveled up country to see actual cows.

Speaking of which, I should take a vacation to the Coast, to finally say with beaming pride that I have traveled around Kenya. Which holiday destination is on your bucket list? We would love to hear from you in the comments.

Featured image (WTD2016)