Last Friday in Kitui, I watched women trained under the KAWI Green Africa Program graduate after weeks of installing solar home systems and clean cookstoves. It felt less like a ceremony and more like a diagnosis and a cure. While our nation debates the Social Health Authority (SHA), these women were delivering the kind of healthcare no card can buy: Cleaner indoor air, safer nights for children, and fewer hours spent breathing smoke. That is prevention in action.
Let’s be honest. SHA matters, but action often comes too late. When air, water, and soil get polluted, hospitals will always be overwhelmed. The environment itself is the first hospital, and policy must treat it that way.
By 2023, electricity access in Kenya reached 76 per cent, but millions still cook with smoky fuels that damage lungs and strain hospitals. Government data show 19.6 million respiratory cases annually, mainly from biomass smoke. The National Cooking Transition Strategy aims for universal access to clean cooking because household air pollution is deadly but preventable. Repeated cholera outbreaks emphasize the ongoing need for safe water and sanitation, while globally, women remain underrepresented in solar energy—a gap we must close to reach more households faster and more safely.
Firstly, Kenya must shift from treatment budgets to prevention investments. A country’s serious financial situation is what keeps citizens out of hospitals. This means allocating real resources for clean cooking, rainwater harvesting, climate-smart agriculture, waste management, and community tree planting. We can create a Preventive Health Window in national and county budgets that funds outcomes such as fewer smoke-related illnesses, fewer waterborne outbreaks, and more productive workdays. Kenya’s clean-cooking strategy already points the way; we must finance it with urgency.
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Secondly, we need a genuine Health and Environment Compact. The Ministries of Health and Environment, SHA, regulators, and counties should share targets and data. Let us focus on what truly matters: fewer clinic visits associated with clean cooking, fewer cholera cases linked to protected water sources, and improved birth outcomes related to pesticide control. When we only count hospital beds and ignore the trees, tanks, and stoves that prevent disease, we celebrate minor wins while missing the bigger picture. Kenya’s rapid increase in electricity access shows what real alignment can achieve.
Thirdly, prevention must pay. The quickest way to make conservation unstoppable is to make it profitable. Communities can earn money from clean kitchens, solar services, water protection, sustainable farming, tree nurseries, and beekeeping. Women-led businesses can be paid per household that adopts cleaner stoves, per ton of smoke reduced, or per solar system maintained. Youth groups can protect water springs, harvest rain, and ensure working tanks. Farmers can earn premiums for using pesticide-smart and soil-restoring methods that improve nutrition.
Education must promote change. Environmental health should be part of every school and church curriculum. Children need to learn that a tree functions like a lung, a river is like a vein, and soil is like a pantry. SHA should allocate funds for prevention messages just as strongly as for claims; the most cost-effective claim is the one never made.
We are not powerless. Start where you stand: Keep kitchens clean, harvest water, plant trees, keep bees, and reuse waste. Small actions done well can transform Kenya. As I write in Green for Life, lasting leadership follows MPR — Mistakes, Problems, and Respect. We must learn quickly, solve what others avoid, and treat every person with dignity.
SHA can manage disease, but only environmental care can prevent it. Kenya needs fewer hospitals and more healthy ecosystems.
Think Green, Act Green!
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By Isaac Kalua Green