LURAMBI, 17 September 2008 (IRIN) - Violet Aburuti sat cradling her three-week-old baby as she waited to see the nurse at Eshikhuyu local clinic in Lurambi division, Kakamega District, western Kenya.

"This is a routine clinic visit for my new baby," Aburuti told IRIN. "But I visit the clinic quite often because of my other children."

Her other three children are all younger than eight. "They suffer from malaria a lot; about every two months one of them gets sick," she said. "The medication is costly."

A bottle of anti-malaria medicine costs at least 60 shillings (about US$1) in the local pharmacies. "I often have to buy at least three bottles of the medicine at any one time," she said.

According to the Kenyan health ministry, malaria is the main cause of hospital attendance and admission in the western region. It especially affects young children and pregnant women.

It was for this reason that the ministry, in conjunction with the humanitarian aid organisation CHF International and Swiss medical technologies firm, Vestergaard Frandsen, launched a seven-day Integrated Prevention Demonstration (IPD) campaign on 16 September in Lurambi, about 450 km west of the capital, Nairobi.

Through multiple health interventions, the campaign targets malaria, diarrhoea and HIV/AIDS control amongst 40,000 people within the 15 to 49 age group.

A healthcare pack comprising an insecticide treated bed net, a water purifier, and condoms is being provided in each of the 30 IPD sites.

Other diseases

Besides malaria, diarrhoeal diseases have taken a toll not only in Lurambi but also in the larger western region. In January, a cholera outbreak affected seven districts in the neighbouring province of Nyanza, according to the ministry of health.

Cases of Acute Watery Diarrhoea were recently reported in three districts. This was attributed to poor sanitation and hygiene and contamination of drinking water at the sources.

"Most of the areas are lacking boreholes so we rely on streams which are not usually very clean," Shitemi Namale, a resident of the Emusanda area in Lurambi, told IRIN.

"There are families with no latrines in their homes...they just go to the sugar cane plantation. When it rains all the dirt goes into the streams," Namale said.

Traditional attitudes were also to blame, said Moses Khamala, a resident. "We used to say, 'Amatsi kabula omwayo omubi' (There is no bad water). This was okay before when the water was clean and we could drink it straight from the stream.

"I think that the people selling water purification tablets have also misled us," Khamala said. "They say you can fetch water from anywhere and the tablets will make it clean."

According to the Assistant Minister for Public Health and Sanitation, James Gesami, there is a need for more hygiene education as well as obtaining clean water at the sources.

So far, Gesami said, the ministry was working on improving public health through activities such as training volunteers to work alongside community health workers for better health sensitisation.

Earlier activities

Past initiatives have had an impact. At least 40 percent of pregnant women in Kenya now sleep under a bed net following the launch of a national campaign 'Komesha Malaria' (End Malaria) in 2006.

But with the majority of the Western Province population living on less than $2 a day, there is a need for more health interventions, according to the Provincial Commissioner, Abdul Mwasera.

"If we do not have a healthy population we are likely to remain poor," Mwasera said. Malaria causes an average loss of 1.3 percent annual economic growth in countries with intense transmission, according to the World Health Organization.

"The bed net is effective for up to 20 washes, while the family water purifier provides clean water for a family of six for three years," Naomi Lydia of Mikkel Vestergaard, Chief Executive of the Vestergaard Frandsen, told IRIN.

"The goal of the IPD is to show that fighting diarrhoea, HIV/AIDS and malaria concurrently is possible and more effective."

By the end of the campaign at least 80 percent of the local adult population is expected to have been tested for HIV/AIDS. Nationally, only 36 percent of the population has been tested.

"CHF will conduct an evaluation of the IPD to determine its feasibility in terms of being a scalable, replicable model nationally," CHF International Country Director, Eric Lugada, pledged.

aw/jm

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org

IRIN news