TUESDAY, 11.30AM:
RESIDENTS of flood-ravaged northern areas of Kenya resorted to newspaper advertisements on Monday to back up their appeals to the government for emergency help.
The advertisements called for medicines and food emergency aid: “People are starving and there is a disaster in the making. The lives of both human beings and livestock are endangered.”
President Daniel Arap Moi, facing an election in a fortnight, responded to the advertisements immediately, ordering that supplies of sufficient food and medicine be transported by military aircraft to the area.
On Monday the Belgian goverment loaned Kenya two C-130 Hercules transport planes for use in relief operations run by the World Food Programme.
Meanwhile, Kenyan government hospitals were closed for the 12th day by striking nurses calling for increases of between 200% and 500%. The ministry of health has not responded to the nurses, who have called on Moi himself to intervene.
Patients and their relatives have been reported hovering in compounds outside the closed hospitals, hoping the situation will improve. In Nyeri, a town 147km north of Mombasa, the single patient left behind, 70-year-old Johana Wanyaga, died on Saturday night, and his body was still lying in his hospital bed on Monday.