Nairobi County Women Representative Esther Passaris underwent a goiter surgery on Wednesday last week.
She took to her Twitter account today to reveal why she accepted to do the surgery here in Kenya at The Nairobi Hospital and not outside the country as known of many government leaders.
She posted a video from the hospital bed and captioned it:
“#PreSurgery Five days ago, I was admitted at The Nairobi Hospital to have a Thyroidectomy, and recorded this message explaining why I went against the grain by having the surgery done locally. #IodineDeficiency #SaltMatters #PublicHealth #OptimumNutrition #IfikieKEBS,” said Passaris.
In the video, the city women rep revealed that a goiter operation is one that can be done easily in Kenya.
“Everybody in my family, all my friends, everybody is like oh Esther you got to go to the UK and get this done, go to India,” she revealed.
However, after consulting with the surgeon, she learnt that he does operate up to 50 such cases every year.
“We have to have confidence in our own doctors, we have to have confidence in our own institutions,” she said.
She finished by urging the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) to test all the salts in the market and confirm that levels of iodine in the salts is the required one to prevent cases of goiter among consumers.