 All righty so so, you are still hanging out with us right here on Y254 TV, a very good morning to you and welcome back. This right here is why in the morning and the segment is Entrepreneurship Tuesday and Health Tuesday as well, where we talk about matters, health and your welfare. And also if you want to venture into business and get to a hug, you know, those little hugs that you need to actually establish something for yourself that will make your money, literally that is the most important part, is what we are all about right here. So you can plug in using the hashtag, why in the morning that is on all our social media platforms and on Facebook as well, Twitter as well at Y254 channel and personally you can find me at BrianSakwa101 on the hashtag why in the morning and on our health segment today we are talking about child and maternal health care and we have our guest who is live in studio with us today, but before I get to the guest, I just want to read for you a little bit of two, three insights here before we get into the conversation and our guest who is already with us in the studio. It says worldwide the mortality rate for children under five dropped from 87 deaths that is per a thousand live births in 1990 to 51 percent and that includes a thousand of the birth live birth in 2011 and despite this enormous accomplishment most countries and this includes developing countries, Kenyon sport did not meet the millennium development goals and increasingly up to they say increasingly child deaths are concentrated in most poorest regions and in low income settings with maternal mortality rates ranging from 150 to more than a thousand per 10,000 live births which while rates are still but still with neonatal mortality rate generally ranging from 20 to 40 per a hundred birth on top of that it says every child desires to have a healthy start in life and fortunately every year millions of parents lose their children to preventable illnesses because they do not have access to life-saving childhood vaccines and equally every every mother should have access to quality health care during pregnancy and childbirth that is according to the wild health organization with more than 800 women die every day from complications in pregnancy and childbirth and also breastfeeding problems the majority of this death can be prevented with the right resources and care and I love that you know it mentioned also on the vaccines part which is actually a conversation right now and we have Dr. Rain Mwendwa who is a pediatrician who will be joining us live in studio who is joining us live in studio right now to take on this topic about child and maternal health care good morning to you Mr. Rain Mwendwa. Good morning, good morning thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming through before we get to the whole conversation first of all I'd like if you if you were to introduce yourself maybe what are some of the titles you hold as well apart from being a professional and a pediatrician or a child specialist in other words. So Dr. Rain I wear many hats a lot of people know me and Dr. Rain through social media but in the more professional spaces I'm Dr. Mwendwa I'm a pediatrician I'm also a child health advocate amongst other things I'm practicing in Kenya I have my own license I see pediatrician I mean I see kids in in the pediatric clinic so yeah and then other than that I do content creation I double a bit for activism I am a fitness activist I am you know an influencer of health right I love the I love the part the influence of health you know a lot of people will be like hey Kwanee what's not happening right now you can actually you know venture in any space especially I love the fact that you know you took up the digital space and you are doing it as well now when it comes to child health care if somebody is watching back at home and they're wondering Kwanee what is child health care see compared to Chakula and in Nini and Nyonya but what does it entail exactly when we say child health care and you mentioned you're also an activist as well so child health basically is anything that will enable a child to thrive it's important in life for children to thrive not just to survive right thriving is so many factors means thriving in the mental space so psychologically it means thriving health wise so the physical element just the aspect of the child being healthy growth and development we look at things like the environment that they're exposed to all of that is a contribution to child health because kids are basically the future of the generation they're the future they're the ones who are going to continue living in this world and and and hopefully taking care of the world so child health just looks at that scope and we look at kids there's different cohorts so you have infants which are kids below one year you have neonates which are you know a baby who is born a new a new born is what we call a neonate and then you have the school going children you have your adolescents and teenagers all the way up to like 19 years is just children child health that's all making sure that they have a good environment to to thrive and not to survive to thrive and not to survive and speaking of that you know uh there's a mothers who come from you know homes that they do not have the facilities to actually ensure that their kids are safe everyone comes to also uh matters health the health conditions including hygiene as well and uh you know they'll come and say from from you from your expertise experience what exactly does it entail to ensure that a child is you said in a safer environment and also does not thrive or does not survive but they thrive what exactly is that environment for an infant as well because this is literally from infant to now you know even adult food as well I would say it's very much on the leadership that you have in your country policies that are in place the laws the constitution all right so those are very important and if those those if you have policies in place and constitutions and rules in place to make sure that's why we have child rights yeah we have child rights yeah child rights and we have things like uh unicef that's try to ensure that the child is protected because it is vital it shows that for any any population to thrive you must take care of the of the children so it's it's basically making sure that policies are in place and that they are followed as our constitution we have the children's act which is there which is there to protect the children so as long as those things are implemented ensuring that they are provided with the right education ensuring that they're protected that they don't face any adverse childhood events when they are children any traumas in in forms of abuse whatever kind of abuse neglect that is going to be exposed to them that can actually impair their growth and development as children so as long as policies are in place the rest is just to trickle down making sure those policies are implemented and in Kenya we are lucky enough we do have those policies where we have a problem is with implementation yeah and and and even when it comes to the government like you said with issues of implementation would you say there have been gaps that uh as a pediatrician yourself you've managed and even even in your pediatrician community as well would you say there are gaps that you managed to feel and right now we are trying to actually we are on the road to goodness um well i wish i could say we're on the roads to goodness healthcare in this country is is not really a priority to me um the way the government looks at it um so the african countries met one time and sat down and realized that if you invest on health you actually have better outcomes in terms of the economies for your countries for your african countries all right and there was something called their budget declaration where each country had declared that 15 percent of their national or yearly budget would go towards healthcare so that different functions of healthcare can be financed in order to improve the general health of of people we have never achieved that as as a nation as a country uh since the abuja declaration the only country that has managed to do that is rwanda um and it's it's a big problem so when you talk about challenges there's a lot of of challenges in terms of of health i think the pandemic exposed just how weak our healthcare system was exposing that we don't even have our old supplies of oxygen we don't produce our own oxygen it showed the the capacities of um intensive care units and high dependency units in this country it showed that there was such a gap it showed you have also the issues with human resource uh and health care in this country and granted we are a low middle income um country trying to move to the middle income uh phase but we have these challenges um where we don't get supported the health systems don't get supported so right now infant mortality rate or the child mortality rate is 34 per thousand life but it's we still haven't achieved that that's 2020 statistics um we we have a maternal mortality rate which means that uh any mother who is childbearing or pregnant or a few days after pregnancy dies that's what we call the maternal mortality rate we're at 167 per 100,000 um not we're at 356 actually with the target is supposed to be 167 that was the target that was set to reduce to that level but we are at 356 which is quite a high number it is extremely high one of the people that contribute a lot to that is children the adolescent age between 10 to 19 years through teenage pregnancies just in january and february this year 700 girls were getting pregnant teenage mothers would you attribute that to the pandemic sorry yes i definitely attributed to the pandemic because schools are sort of a haven for for and they offer protection so when the girls go to school when the boys go to school they are sort of in a social protective um institution because when they stay home and there's unemployment and there's poverty and there's frustration there's a highest chance of you know gender-based violence to to occur and some of that is sexual gender-based violence right that would lead to these teenage pregnancies it's very unfortunate that you know it took that time now you're speaking of the pandemic um when the pandemic struck you uh you're actually on the spot to actually you know fill in the gap about misinformation and it actually put you on the map remember you did a lot of interviews that time uh or what exactly were you trying to clarify to people because i remember you did an interview and even the reactions were who is this doctor who is an artist as well because you know people had not known that you are also a doctor and still you are an artist linked to also very famous and renowned musician in this country as well yeah so yeah i think covid is what um put me in the social media spotlight um i've never really been on social media that you know how this is my channel type of thing but because of the misinformation that was going around during the covid-19 pandemic you know everybody had their conclusions and don't have any medical background you don't have any expertise and all of a sudden you know about this virus and things like that so i felt it's important to come in a space where i get my information that is evidence-based it's scientific based on actually debunking some of these myths that were going around because it was crazy back then it's hard it's it's it's only now that we're forgetting certain things but people are being told to take all sorts of drugs to do all sorts of crazy things some people are even saying peak and can cure covid so yeah it was a time where i felt more of us needs to be fight misinformation and use different platforms and our social media so yeah um did did plenty of interviews then i think now i'm a bit of a household name in terms of you know online presence in terms of health care in terms of you know just basically if there's something that needs to be debunked health wise right i'm the go-to guy right now on social media in terms of health care right i can test to that because i was watching during that time now i'm speaking of that as well you have your segment called ask doctorine or doctorine ask ask look terrain um so yeah like i said one of the things i do i'm a content creator i'm also an entrepreneur i'm a director to a production company a media production company so one of the things we do we do different productions and one of them was um my own channel called ask doctorine which was basically what we called health care in the eyes of the hip hop doctor um where i looked um given the feedback i got on social media i thought there is a fresh way in which we can bring health care to the table so that the youth can you know make it really easy for for people to consume because a lot of our health information platforms um sorry to say on mainstream media is is really very heavy medical jargon we don't know how to you know we don't know how to break things down to the common common person and that's that's that's something that i think every every doctor every practitioner or health care worker should be able to do right because once they're informed once your patient is informed then they make better decisions and you you can prevent a lot of um you know diseases and miscomings and people make the right choice right before before you answer what exactly contributes to some of these uh this large number of high mortality rate you mentioned you're also a hip hop a hip hop uh your hip hop doctor your life of a music doctor and also uh a pediatrician so when people actually uh try to find out who you are it was actually amazing to see that you know this guy is not only just a child specialist but he's also i'm he's also musically aligned like in the creative aspect of it all and also you're married to you know dela who was a very famous artist way way back who took a sabbatical in the music industry as well so when parents actually come to consult from you and they realize you know i'm coming to consult from a hip hop doctor do they sometimes get scared and they'll be like no me i don't want to leave my child with this kind of a doctor ama but what let's say who are some of the people that come to you for consultations um i would say i relatively young people uh most of my of my the parents to my patients are usually young people any any range from like 20 22 going to to 30s so those those are most most of my patients i do see older older ones who have older kids as well um but that's the majority of my patients um i've not encountered any issues with my patients like saying oh you do music you do this and that and is he serious or or whatever no because i think one of the ways that i portray myself as well on social media is that i try to be very unfiltered to the world to show people that yes you're a child specialist yes you're a neurosurgeon but before you're all of those things that people consider is superhuman you're a human being true so before i became a doctor i had my own passions i had my own talents that i used to pursue and that was in the creative space and i just happened to continue doing them i'm not as active in music um as i was back then but now that time or when time is there of course i still i try create i still go to the studio things like that right yeah and so just come of that creative vibe of music and do you listen to beats as well two beats uh music beats that actually give you inspiration yeah of course of course yeah so if you're going to create music um you have to have a lot of friends who produce music i don't do um music production myself um in in terms of beat making but yeah i listen to beats that's where you get inspiration that's where you get a flow that's where you get a style to okay this this song is going to go this way this is going to be a drill beat this is going to be a bit of a boom bop type of style right this is going to be a more melancholic kind of song so it's the beats will actually drive the conversation and what you want to to to bring to the table interesting and we'll come back to that now back to our child health care and mortality rate uh if for example we want to actually have a sport check in our country right now uh what would you say uh the say heavy factors let me say heavy factors that actually contribute to some of this you know child mortality rate uh we have neonatal or uh maternal health care issues that actually faster in our country what would you say is like the biggest cause to them both in urban and rural areas as well okay so i've worked in pipe in the public sector and i've also worked in the private sector okay so being exposed to both of those settings or setups um for years now it's it always boils down to one thing to me it's the support the lack of support that we have if we are supported more because trust me we have very brilliant minds out there um from specialists from researchers um from you know scientists all the way down to nurses and and you know clinical officers and the like right we have brilliant minds they just need to be supported they just need the right infrastructure a lot of them just need to be you know employed all right now if we get the right type of uh infrastructure and healthcare workers are supported healthcare workers are are you know working in a conducive environment a hospital has drugs a hospital has you know basic um equipment you know consumables then you get healthcare workers who actually get satisfied um at what they do right working as as a healthcare working delivering healthcare services right those are the things that will improve our healthcare in this in this country right because in the private sector you can see a different thing where it's like everything is there whatever you need is there right you don't have to leave the hospital to go and buy a drug you don't have to you know wait or transfer the patient to go in to go and be seen by as another specialist because in your county that specialist is not there right so all these things are are very doable if we just have accountability if the funds that are actually supposed to be going to do something are actually used right if the taxes are put into the right space if people are funded properly and hif works properly then we can achieve what we call universal healthcare and that's the what people want to achieve but at the moment i i don't see it happening with the way systems are all right and would you say um according to the outgoing government system that has been there or the leadership system that has been there and the incoming one would you say the the one that is actually living the stage tried i'm a i'm a from your experience as well from your point of view and perspective in terms of even alleviating that and creating that you know space to advocate you know for uh enough child healthcare would you say the outgoing government tried its best and also if years or no uh the incoming government what are some of the things maybe you would want them to consider just in case maybe they're watching and since you're a specialist what are some of the call action that you'll like them to do in terms of even advocating for that space when it comes to child and maternal health care as well so yeah i would say i wouldn't say this this there's nothing that they did yeah that was positive so i must i must applaud that um what we know from the ministries is that actually who working at us term was the best managed healthcare docket right since healthcare in terms of even budget allocation and things like that right but yes also they are flaws like the biggest problem that ever happened to healthcare in this country was healthcare being devolved because healthcare was devolved illegally yeah in this country there was no public participation stakeholders such as the healthcare workers were not really involved in that devolution okay and we're seeing a problem because now every county has their own ways of going about healthcare taking charge of healthcare then it's very dependent on which governor you have so you have this disparity where counties that are managed well have good health care and other counties don't but that creates inequality and that goes against your constitutional right where everybody has the the equal right to the highest attainable quality of health care right so the biggest problem was devolution it still is uh devolution right we need things in place like a health service commission it's still very early to say whether this incoming government is is going to is going to do better but in terms of governors um we can see two governors uh governor sakaja right um and governor abdinasir in in mombasa right have set up you know task forces um health task force to actually go and do like a root cause analysis or a feasibility study to check what is really going on where are the gaps how can we improve you know where are we doing well and things like that so those are the only two governors the rest of the governors uh and and leadership has really been going in at health care workers and things like that crazy articles going around about you know doctors being malicious and and that's that's the narrative of the which is not true right of course it's not true of course it's not true it's an article that was released um i think on saturday it was on this front page saturday nation okay it was called doctors con game and it was really really poorly done poor poor journalism not well researched thought about um you know other other aspects were not looked into so right it is what it is yeah but i love the fact that you know you are also positively and massively advocating for the right ways to actually you know have doctors you know being looked at as more professional as compared to that lingo that you know was used there now speaking of also that uh when it comes to even sensitization of proper child and health care and i love the fact that in in the middle uh you initially mentioned about you know the covid 19 pandemic being a high contributing factor to uh the uh i'll say early child early early pregnancies that actually you know was brought about by the covid 19 pandemic so uh when it comes to sensitization uh even breastfeeding itself uh these young girls who have already you know gone through that uh experience maybe what are some of the things that they should know because uh we are looking at young girls who have already given birth and the young mothers they don't have much information they're in rural areas but still they have to raise this kid they can't throw the kid away so even when it comes to sensitization and the information they need what exactly should they maybe be given to ensure that you know they maintain that proper care of child health care and maternity as well so the teenage thing is is is really it should be such a big big big priority because 700 girls getting pregnant per day from january to february is alarming right this is this year this is this year only this is this year we're talking about this year right that's 45 000 girls in two months now what does two months what does that mean yeah this is from age 10 to 19 19 yeah that's that's the population that they looked at right and this means that one a child who has rights to education once they fall pregnant it becomes a problem because you're going to carry this child for 10 months in your tummy then after that you're going to deliver you're not going to go rush back immediately to school you're going to lose you're going to lose out taking care of this child if this young girl does not have the support for this child to be taken care of it means that now she has to take care of this human being and that means she might not be able to go to school she might have to stay home take care of her child go look for a job somewhere just to to to be able to provide for a child because she has nobody she has the father is not there maybe her parents are not their parents have have passed on or not supportive yeah or not supportive that's one two is if she's lucky enough to make it because the reason why the maternal deaths in this country the highest is in that same population right between 10 to 19 years 15 and above is because the birth canal this is still a child yeah you're you're a child who is carrying a child your anatomy is not mature enough for a child bearing right so a lot of complications you put yourself at risk at risk just giving birth can kill the mother right um it puts the baby at risk because they can be premature so at the same time you're also increasing the infant mortality rate it means that this baby might come very low birth weight not able to catch a disease and die very quickly and you'll contribute more of that so it's all interconnected if you if you don't give this young kids 10 19 years something we call comprehensive sexuality education sexuality education yeah where we talk about different things such as contraception right talk about family planning we talk about gender sexual orientation your reproductive health rights your rights as a human being or as a woman uh where you cannot go into early marriage first early marriages where you where you decline things like uh you know ffgm you know and all the all of those things all of those things um combined are what what we need to do to be able to reduce your your your teenage pregnancies you need to empower people for them to make the right choices right you know they are the problem is that a lot of people are fighting this right when you talk about contraception then you have to fight the the catholic church the religious isn't the catholic church or the whole religious sector yeah it's it's very religious you know and we're a nation that you know religion runs things yeah christianity runs things and right we put sometimes we we decide because of our faith that we will ignore the science we will ignore the data we'll ignore that 700 girls per day are getting pregnant we'll ignore that 10 to 19 years hiv is the highest is the highest right and because we are of faith in a particular faith that says we don't do those things right we won't do them so that's that's where we're also one of the major obstacles in that exactly culture uh our cultural and religious uh values sometimes sometimes right cause a big rift between the scientific evidence that we provide and it's usually thrown that oh this is from the white people these are things from the white people and we're trying to bring in gays and lesbians and things like that right uh we come to this without even talking about also the issue at hand which is uh uh the thing to ask the men's of health is advocating for uptake of uh covid 19 boosters is actually a story that's also developing in all news outlets and now in new in new experience as well as a penetration they're also advocating for children to you know go and get these vaccines and i remember we had a conversation and you told me that in the u.s we went hard up to children as as as at least five years of age let's say from five to around 12 because our part in your ready our teenagers some other countries as well in kenya would you advocate for our parents to go take their kids to be vaccinated against covid 19 definitely definitely definitely i'm a pediatrician that means that i am a advocate for vaccination and immunization because we start giving vaccines to children from birth soon as the baby is born we give them a vaccine right and these are things that we know that work the science and evidence is out there the studies have even been done on babies six months already for the covid 19 i'd give an example of the influenza vaccine which is a vaccine we give also to prevent complicated um pneumonia caused by the influenza virus or the flu virus right we give babies the influenza vaccine at six months and give them another boost at seven months so once the studies are out the data evidence is out the safety um is out the WHO approves fda approves we go ahead and we will recommend i will be one of the people shouting on top of the roofs i have already had this conversation on my on my platform that once yeah i'm i'm just waiting i'm actually just waiting to get the go ahead personally i'm waiting to to vaccinate my son who is like how old is this 10 months yeah i'm i'm just waiting to be given the go ahead and it's allowed right uh we can't also do this without talking about you know uh the covid 19 not covid 19 rather that is mental health uh uh september is suicide prevention month as well and this incompress mental health awareness from your activism point of view uh what would you say uh some of the things that you can do to ensure that we continue spreading awareness about even mantas mental health awareness even kids as well kids get depressed as well kids get stressed you know and sometimes when parents are not easy to tell that you know your child is depressed and they need you know help so from your experience what are some of the things that we can do to ensure that we set the bar clear and everything is in place as individuals one of the things we can do as individuals and as a community and as a society what we can do is a lot of our mental health issues stem from our early childhood experiences right so that's why it's so important to protect the child and advocate for the child right because these things we call them adverse childhood experiences adverse childhood experiences and these things child abuse neglect all of these things and how how they grow up will actually influence whether a child becomes depressed when uh grows up to become depressed grows up to have any mental health issues like anxiety right and all those things can later only lead to suicide all right so it's it's important that we take responsibility of our children we take care of them we nurture them we protect them in as much as possible and also the community to make sure that this child is also protected in case they're always alert in case of abuse in case there's an uncle who is known to have certain things you know um and then the rest is systematic now is you know alleviating poverty i'm ensuring that there's no overcrowding and all those things that you know that's more of government in leadership but individually just create an environment for your child to thrive and they won't grow up with with mental health issues all right thank you i'm being told we are out of time but i'll ask two three questions uh uh quickly quickly uh do you have maybe a place that if people want to exist uh or consult you for you know when it comes to matters uh child and maternal health care do you have like a hospital yeah so they can you can book a pediatric uh consultation at mirazi speciality at mirazi speciality clinic we're on 40 suits uh on the eighth floor suit eight or nine so you just need to give us a call and uh book an appointment and ask for the terrain you have a number where they can book a call um i have it i can say it off yeah sure you can say it off and the social media as well okay so the social media on instagram it's at mirazi on twitter it's also at mirazi uh this is a specialty clinic we you can see not only doctorine you can see from plastic surgeons to urologists to psychiatrists counselors so the clinic number is 011 303 5848 book the appointment gets seen by a you know qualified health professional and will sort you out right uh as you exit uh how's dela how's dela but though she took a break from music if not hard from her for a long time yeah dela is just very very engulfed in in in being a mom she's trying to be a good mom yeah she's she's just uh dealing with the the struggle of motherhood right but she's good she's good she's gonna make music we'll see how make a come back soon i do not want to speak for her when when when she decides she decides tell her why we are rooting out for her that one i'll tell her yeah you'll tell her right but she's also open to do interviews um i'm not sure you'd have you'd have to ask her you'll have to ask her please please ensure that you send our warm regards to her and tell how we are rooting out for her music as well uh that has been uh dr rain mwendoor talking to us about matthew's child and maternal health care thank you so much once again for taking your time to hang out with us we would maybe love to have a part two of this again and definitely sure we will invite you once again but on that note we are taking a short break when we come back we've got you again with an unprocessed personal on our entrepreneurship segment today where we're going to talk about matthew's business how do you ensure that you know you have a good business what are some of those hugs that you need back at home keep it on the hashtag why in the morning on all our social media platforms