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That four learners and a teacher have died from exposure to contaminated food and water in a public school is cause for alarm and calls for speedy measures that will improve the health and safety of learners and teachers alike.

No parent should ever have to be called to a school to collect the body of their child, especially if the cause of death is preventable. Cases such as cholera and typhoid should, by now, be a thing of the past given that their causes and prevention are assumed to be common knowledge.

For far too long, many public schools have operated without sufficient ablution facilities, or a steady supply of clean water, putting the lives of learners, teachers and other staff at risk of otherwise preventable diseases. Boarding schools, which, ideally ought to have sanatoriums and a nurse, have also been operating without these support facilities and staff, making it difficult for learners to be attended to quickly in the event of medical emergencies. This ought to be relooked and the Ministry of Education compelled to set aside funds for these.

A school ought to be a safe space for all in that community. If anything, it ought to serve as a model of how society should function. Unfortunately, too many schools in Kenya fall below the recommended standards of sanitation, and this has far-reaching implications on the health and safety of learners in the short term and in their general well-being in the long term. This must be addressed.

A nation’s future is in its children. We should not allow diseases that other nations found a cure for over two centuries ago to plague our society yet we know how to prevent them and what needs to be done.

We must also demand high levels of sanitation standards for staff who handle food in schools — including retraining where need arises — to ensure that they prioritise the safety of learners. In the event that investigations prove there was negligence, punitive action must be taken against those found culpable so that they can serve as deterrence to anyone in the school ecosystem who compromises the health of learners.

Finally, the curriculum should be designed in a way that allows issues of personal hygiene as well as public health to be infused into lessons to equip learners with the knowledge they need to maintain high levels of sanitation wherever they may be, not just in schools.