By Allan Mungai
A week ago, the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) banned the sale of five brands of maize flour due to high aflatoxin levels.
A Twitter user shared a picture of his meal – ugali with beef.
A fellow user replied, “aflatoxin with a dash of sodium metabisulphite. Fine day for science” and amid laughter and applause, the tweet was retweeted about 1,500 times.
Kenyans are a people that draw laughter from the grimmest of situations but even laughter can no longer mask the nation’s frustration with the government.
As Kenyans were coming to terms with the realisation that we may have been consuming poisonous levels of aflatoxin and sodium metabisulphite – an agent used in the preservation of meat – two agencies mandated with checking the quality of medicines were squabbling over their roles.
Enforce the quality
The National Quality Control Laboratory and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board, two complementary agencies responsible for the safety of pharmaceuticals in Kenya are embroiled in a supremacy battle that threatens to endanger the lives of Kenyans.
The squabbles could give leeway to the entry of unregistered, counterfeit or substandard drugs and medicine into the country.
In Kenya, death is dispensed at the supermarket shelves, groceries and pharmacies because the institutions charged with ensuring quality checks are not effectively performing their roles.
Kebs has been in a spot over the sale of substandard and potentially unsafe products despite having the mandate to enforce quality standards.
“What exactly does a Kebs standardisation mark mean because it doesn’t actually mean “safe”, one Kenyan pondered on Twitter.
