Food poisoning in schools recure as schools focus on treatment rather than prevention . [File, Standard]
When dozens of learners fall ill after eating contaminated food or drinking unsafe water, the response is often swift. Children are rushed to hospital, investigations are launched and schools are temporarily closed.
But according to public health officers, Kenya continues to ask the wrong question.
Instead of asking how to treat sick learners, they say the country should be asking why preventable outbreaks continue to happen in the first place.
The warning comes against the backdrop of repeated school food poisoning and disease outbreaks that have affected hundreds of learners over the years.
In 2023, more than 50 pupils at St Andrew's Primary School in Kitui were hospitalised after consuming suspected contaminated maize flour. Public health officers later seized hundreds of kilograms of expired flour during investigations.
Nearly two decades earlier, one of the country's worst public health emergencies struck eastern Kenya when contaminated maize containing aflatoxins caused 317 illnesses and claimed 125 lives, many of them school-going children.
In Bungoma, another outbreak linked to leptospirosis infected more than 800 learners and staff after exposure to contaminated environments, exposing weaknesses in environmental health surveillance.