By MWINGI TIMES CORRESPONDENT
As county governments face diminishing funding from the national government, it has emerged that residents in Kitui County faced notable ravage of waterborne diseases. Water harvesting structures should be in place to mitigate water stress at the household level and institutions, a team of experts say in a report.
Released on February 6, this year, Kitui County SRA 2024 Debrief report was done by the National Drought Management Authority, both county and national governments as well as NGOs such as the UNICEF, Caritas, World Vision and ADRA among others. Among other things, the report compared morbidity of diarrhea trends for the year 2023 and 2024. It found that due to water scarcity and contamination, there was higher morbidity from diarrhea in 2023 compared to 2024 in the entire population of Kitui county.
"Dystentery and bloody diarrhea increased from 604 to 627 for 2023 and 2024 respectively", the report reads in part. For this, the technical team said, 80,000 households should be fitted with strategic water pans for irrigation.
It was also revealed that there were increased reported cases of typhoid fever from 1216 to 1337 in 2024. The affected sub counties were Kitui Rural, Kitui West, Kitui Central, Kitui South, Mwingi West and Kitui East.
Experts recommend expansion of school meals program or relief food. 100,000 households should be targeted in provision of relief food, says NDMA and partners. They also say drought recovery seeds should be distributed to those homes for planting in the next rain seasons.
The government appears illprepared in dealing with hunger situation in the county since only two kilograms of relief food was distributed in Tseikuru this February, for instance. It comprised maize and beans.
MWINGI TIMES for timely and authoritative news.
No comments
Post a Comment