EXCLUSIVE: 150 admitted in hospitals after mass food poisoning at Strathmore University

More than 150 students and staff of Strathmore University are admitted to various hospitals in Nairobi after massive food poisoning that occurred at the institution last Friday.
All the affected are fourth year students who had attended the university’s seniors dinner, according to a memo sent out by the university.
“This is to let you know of the regrettable incident of food poisoning that occurred last Friday 20th March, to our 4th year students, and staff members who attended the Seniors Dinner,” read the memo, dispatched by Betty Ngala, the university relations.
“The University is fully aware of this matter, and has taken charge to ensure the health and safety of our students and staff.”
KIDNEY FAILURE
Sources say some students are admitted in high dependency units suffering from severe dehydration.
There is also talk of kidney injury on all students since they are exhibiting similar symptoms, although the extent varies depending on the degree of dehydration.
“It (kidney injury) is said to be reversible depending on how fast one gets dehydrated,” said a parent.
The Nairobi News understands that some parents of the affected students are considering taking legal action against the institution.
“It is really traumatizing because we don’t know what we are dealing with and the rumours are too many,” said a parent.
The university has not given the caterers name, only saying catering services for the dinner were outsourced and that investigations have been launched to establish the real cause of the food poisoning.
Food samples as well as patients results have been collected for analysis at the Kenya Medical Research Institute.
“Our faculty members are working to ascertain the numbers of students affected,” said Ngala.
A parent of one of the affected students said the number could be as high as 150.
ALMOST DIED
Kammie Mutegi, one of the affected students, slammed the university, vaunted for its high educational standards, for dropping the ball on food matters.
“I am so disappointed in the school, they have such high standards educational wise you would think they would have the same standards in their activities! So sad, it’s been two days and I am not well. That catering company must have been at it to kill us prolly (probably), I have never seen food poisoning work so fast!! Anyway we shall recover and graduate,” said Mutegi.
Victoria Nthambi said: “Jesus! I almost died jana (yesterday)…whatever that food poison is, it’s the worst I ever had.”

Third Tunisia museum suspect ‘on the run’

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi (L) prays 

TUNIS, Tunisia, Mar 23 – Tunisia is hunting a third suspect in the massacre of tourists at its national museum, President Beji Caid Essebsi said, after admitting security failures at the Bardo. “Definitely there were three,” Essebsi told France media iTele television and Europe 1 radio.

“Two were killed, but there is one who is now on the run,” he said. “In any case, he will not get very far.”
Wednesday’s attack on the National Bardo Museum in Tunis killed 20 foreign tourists and a policeman, and was the first assault claimed by the Islamic State group in the North African country.
It came as Tunisia — the birthplace of the Arab Spring that held its first free elections last year — struggles with rising Islamist extremism.
On Saturday, authorities released CCTV footage showing two black-clad gunmen with automatic weapons walking unimpeded though a large lobby in the Bardo, just after noon.

The grainy footage then shows the gunmen passing an unidentified male. They point an automatic weapon at him briefly before letting him leave as they make their way up a staircase.After rampaging through the museum for several hours, the two gunmen were killed in an assault by security forces.

Secretary of State for Security Rafik Chelly said Sunday on the website of French weekly Paris Match the third person in the video was “one of the two Vespa drivers that brought the killers”, and that he wanted to leave because of the police response.

“The drivers and other logistics people from the cell, a total of 15 people, are already behind bars,” Chelly added. The interior ministry had earlier said more than 10 people were arrested.
– Guards having coffee –
The interior ministry said on Saturday it had issued an arrest warrant for Maher Ben Moudli Kaidi, a Tunisian suspect described as a “dangerous terrorist element”.

According to Chelly, Kaidi coordinated the attack.
Officials have admitted that guards tasked with protecting the museum and the nearby parliament were having coffee at the time of the assault.
Essebsi acknowledged that more could have been done to prevent the attack, which raised fears for the lucrative tourism sector that represents eight percent of Tunisia’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Museum curator Moncef Ben Moussa told AFP on Sunday the Bardo would reopen on Tuesday and that all of its the artefacts were “intact”.

Human waste contains gold worth millions: study

Toilets at Kibos secondary school of excellence in Kisumu East constituency.

 

WASHINGTON

Human feces contains gold and other precious metals that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, experts say.

Now the trick is how to retrieve them — a potential windfall that could also help save the planet.

"The gold we found was at the level of a minimal mineral deposit," said Kathleen Smith, of the US Geological Survey, after her team discovered metals such as platinum, silver and gold in treated waste.

A recent study by another group of experts in the field found that waste from one million Americans could contain as much as $13 million worth of metals.

Finding a way to extract the metals could help the environment by cutting down on the need for mining and reducing unwanted release of metals into the environment.

"If you can get rid of some of the nuisance metals that currently limit how much of these biosolids we can use on fields and forests, and at the same time recover valuable metals and other elements, that's a win-win," said Smith.

"There are metals everywhere — in your hair care products, detergents, even nanoparticles that are put in socks to prevent bad odours."

More than seven million tons of biosolids come out of US wastewater facilities each year: about half is used as fertilizer on fields and in forests and the other half is incinerated or sent to landfills.

Smith and her team are on a mission to find out exactly what is in our waste.

"We have a two-pronged approach. In one part of the study, we are looking at removing some regulated metals from the biosolids that limit their use for land application.

"In the other part of the project, we're interested in collecting valuable metals that could be sold, including some of the more technologically important metals, such as vanadium and copper that are in cell phones, computers and alloys," said Smith.

The findings were presented at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, taking place in Denver through Thursday.

Poachers slaughter 30 elephants in DR Congo

Garamba is home to 1,700 elephants, according to wildlife surveys, making it a target for armed ivory poachers/FILE

KINSHASA, RD Congo, Mar 23 – Ivory-hungry poachers have killed 30 elephants in a Congolese national park in the past two weeks, park authorities said Monday, adding that the culprits were likely Sudanese militia. News of the Garamba National Park slaughter came as wildlife experts warned at a major summit in Botswana that elephants could become extinct with a few decades if poaching continues.
Sudanese raiders are suspected of killing the endangered pachyderms, conservation director at African Parks Jean Marc Froment said.
“We have a group of north Sudanese coming inside the park, spreading in small groups and during 15 days they killed 30 elephants,” said Froment, whose group co-manages Garamba National Park, located in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Garamba is home to 1,700 elephants, according to wildlife surveys, making it a target for armed ivory poachers.

With just 150 rangers patrolling 13,000 square kilometres (8,000 square miles) of grassland and forest, it is difficult to keep the giant mammals safe.Froment believes Sudanese militia are behind the latest killing spree. They spread into Garamba after finding the elephant population density was thinning in Central African Republic and northern Congo, he said.

“These are very experienced elephant hunters,” Froment added.
In 2012, Sudanese poachers killed as many as 300 elephants in 10 weeks in Bouba N’Djida National Park, northern Cameroon.
Some of those poachers wore government uniforms and carried army identity documents.
The Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), whose ranks are infamously swelled by abducted children, have also poached in Garamba.
Ugandan troops who are meant to be hunting fugitive LRA chief Joseph Kony down, as well as members of the South Sudanese and Congolese armies, are also believed to be involved in poaching.
Last June, African Parks warned of a “poaching onslaught” in Garamba after 68 elephants were killed in just two months. Ten of them were slaughtered on a single day.
The parks authority singled out the LRA as a main culprit for that slaughter, though at least nine pachyderms were shot dead by a military helicopter.
African elephants could be extinct in the wild “within our lifetime”, experts warned on Monday at the Africa Elephant Summit held in Botswana.
Elephant hunting is often organised by international criminal networks to supply the illegal ivory market, mainly in Asia, with some profits thought to fund regional conflicts and militants.

SEVEN EASY PLACES FOR GRADUATES TO NETWORK

Imagine if the job industry was designed like a lottery. A number of random names on cards thrown into a bucket, some mixing and shaking by one of those blindfolded assistants and voila! Congratulations Mike, you are now the lucky winner of the vacant Head of Operations position. If wishes were horses, save me a star to wish on.
Sadly, this is not the situation. Like a house, a career is built from the ground up. Unlike a house, you cannot buy it to renovate. To get a job or simply advance your career, you need the right connections. That’s the long and short of it. You start as a single person and just like a spider, weave your web of professionals and before you know it, you have this priceless mosaic of leads and referrals.
Some people are good at this. They attend corporate galas and all of a sudden, they are in touch with the top brass. However, these events tend to be expensive and only a few can afford to get past the doors. Your journey need not start on such lofty origins, here are the alternative places you can achieve the same results.

1. Volunteer
For just this one time, drop your capitalistic utopist approach to things and look beyond the money. While volunteering sounds like free labor, you can pay yourself by exchanging contacts with any professionals you will find interesting while working on the project.

2. Attend product launches and public events
Most of the time, product launches attract the best people in the industry or in the company. Try and get in touch with these people. Be brave and try to access the backstage or catch up with them before the event starts or immediately after it ends. Remember, it could be the only chance you get, so pitch yourself like it’s the last time.

3. LinkedIn
It took some time for the local professionals to warm to it but now it’s the place to be! Open an account and spruce up your CV. Connect with relevant professionals and you’ll reap the benefits.

4. Participate in product surveys
This is one of the little networking niches that very few people explore. It’s effortless and most of the time, all your expenses are taken care of. Go the extra mile and try to network with as many people in the company as you can. They might retain you or even refer you somewhere.

5. Attend career fairs
Yes, we know you are a very busy person. Yes, we know there’s this bash you are supposed to attend, and you cannot miss it as long as you are still occupying this earth vertically. What you don’t know is that there is a career goldmine at that career fair being hosted at your campus and you are missing out!

6. Interviews
Don’t just show up at the company or organization you are interviewing for and disappear. Hang around after the interview and get to connect with people. Don’t be afraid to ask for the interviewer’s contacts and keep in touch with them even if you were unsuccessful.

7. Alumni events
After graduation, everyone took a different path. They have got a vast amount of experience and the only place that you’ll get to reconnect with a lot of your classmates is at alumni events. Don’t skip these events and while there, make sure to catch up with as many people as you can.
Remember to always keep in touch with your networks after getting their contacts otherwise it’ll be out of sight, out of mind!

LEAVE VIOLENCE OUT OF IT

It defeats the whole purpose of a protest when you inject violence into it. The topic of discussion in the aftermath of that protest will be the violence and its destruction instead of the ailing matter that fostered the protestation. 

A zoom into the Kenyan population will get you to focus on a certain group known as university students. There is nothing that will unite this fraternity more that protests, demonstrations or mass action. Be that as it may, violence, more often than not, creeps into these courses of action by student. Whether it is the University of Nairobi, Moi University, Egerton University or even Nairobi Aviation College, violence is an ingredient students never forget to remember to add into their “recipe” of mass action.

University students protest in Nairobi

A case in point is the scenario that played out at Moi University on the 23^rd of February, 2015. Although the protests were by any imaginable standards and parameters justified, violence prevailed. Students protesting the rape and murder of one of theirs made sure the police, as usual, fell victim to their acts of violence. One of their land cruisers was set ablaze.

An inescapable talking point at the moment is the cost of that vehicle and how it will be replaced as shall be determined by the concerned authorities. Should have the students kept it civilized and protested within reason, all effort and attention would have been directed to the main issues the students wanted addressed- a lesson university students need to learn sooner or later.

ADMINISTRATORS AT FAULT

An intense and objective look at the way the administration handles the students’ welfare at Moi University will lead you to the definite conclusion of alarming rates of disregard. The students seem to have been relegated to the periphery as far as prioritization by the administrators of the institution is concerned. Less than a week back, a third year student, a girl, was raped then murdered within the main campus of the university. Of course a leading factor in the list of elements that constitute welfare is security. The deceased came face to face with her fate as she made her way to the residential rental houses which are non-hostels and are far away from the university-manned hostels, presumably closely guarded.

The sole reason a student who has paid school fee and accommodation fee both in full would reside outside of the hostels is student overload. The administration definitely is aware of how many bed spaces are readily available for students before any semester commences. It is therefore safe to say that the administrators overlooked the welfare of the over 3000 students who would miss rooms if they were to call three different lots of students back to school. They went ahead and did. Charity Maina, the deceased, was among this lot of students.

Clearly, if there is any entity to take all the blame for the dreadful events of that night, it is the administrators. From the top command, to the last person involved in making the regretful decision to have three lots be in session at the university without proper prior planning.

REPEATED INTERNET OUTAGES AT THE COMPUTER LABORATORIES

There was lack of internet access in the school of Information Sciences computer laboratories on Monday, 16^th of February as from 2:00 pm with no prior communication from the laboratory technicians on why this had happened.

The laboratory was however full with all the computers having occupants who were disappointed for having made efforts to come early to book computers only to realize that they had no internet access. 

“I have come all the way from F houses as early as 1:50 pm only to be gravely disappointed here. At least they should have communicated in the morning via a memo so that we could make other arrangements,” lamented John, a third year student in the school of Information Sciences.

Further engagements with the students therein led me to establish that indeed this was not the first time students were treated without diligence at the computer laboratories. Every once in a while the internet fails to operate either due to equipment repairs, upgrades or other undisclosed reasons. Prior communication is never made.