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Whatever the costs, and no matter how many of us die in the process, Kenyan's led by president Mwai Kibaki, are determined to die in their hundreds of thousands rather than admit that we are in the middle of an alcohol and other drugs of abuse crisis, nay disaster.

For indeed it is time that alcohol and drug abuse in Kenya were declared a national disaster. But rather than making a concerted, well-coordinated effort, Kenyan's are instead in deep denial.

President Mwai Kibaki seems to take the lead in this mass denial in spite of several appeals I have made to him in this and other similar fora. Last year in October stories doing the rounds had it that the president had also quit drinking alcoholic beverages.

Now why would one quit what all the manufacturers of alcoholic beverages spend millions in advertising trying to convince all who would listen that life would be one long unbearable drudge without the soothing salve of alcohol?

From personal experience I know that one of the most obvious reasons one would quit alcohol, or rather be forced to quit imbibing, is if one is alcoholic. The alternatives to continued imbibing are grim and are only three - jail, a mental institution or death. This has been proved time and time again by rivers of tears of loved ones left behind flooding the coffins of their dead and departed.

Other reasons range from ill health, often as a result of drinking, problems at work, on the domestic, financial and social front usually also as a result of alcohol or exacerbated by alcohol leading to more consumption and problems.

So is our president alcoholic? Or did alcohol cause him problems on any of the fronts mentioned above? Or is it simply due to his fragile health ever since his motor vehicle accident in late 2002?

Whatever the reason (and only he can tell us) he did stop and must have only done so after carefully weighing the pros and cons, with the benefits of quitting finally taking the upper hand.

Therefore since October six months ago why doesn't the president want to share these benefits of an alcohol free lifestyle with the rest of the Kenyan population and this time I am not talking about the youth.

For whenever there is talk about alcohol and other drug abuse, it is always assumed to be a prerogative of the young. Not so. For one of the most frequent, unfortunate yet completely unnecessary manifestations of especially alcohol misuse is domestic violence and almost wholly against young girls and women.

Last week non other than the First lady Lucy Kibaki cried foul against increasing cases of gender-based violence. She was quoted in a section of the local press as saying "It is only when women gain their place as equal members of society that gender violence will be overcome." The First Lady was speaking at a ceremony organised by the Gender Violence Recovery Center (GVRC) of the Nairobi Women's Hospital.

But this hospital and center though doing an exemplary job in highlighting to the Kenyan public the extent of this violence which does not seem to exempt female babies whenever it rears its ugly head, should not minimise the part that drugs especially alcohol plays in these traumatising dramas.

For to do this would be to go against studies to many to enumerate that have catalogued the extremely high co-relation between the two. Indeed it can almost be described as a symbiotic relationship with one feeding of the other.

As a matter of fact this hospital has had a flood of such cases since its inception and has managed to bring to the fore to Kenyan's that something is very wrong. But what we need to pinpoint very carefully is exactly what is wrong. Where precisely does the problem stem from?

For all over the republic there are rapes, beatings, maiming and even killings perpetuated against the female sex by men who have had a drop or dose too much. But even worse is the new violence of HIV/AIDS thrust upon these hapless children, girls and women.

Men in drinking places sleeping with all manner of women, thousands of men who even in one unguarded moment, senses dulled by alcohol, plow where they would not ordinarily have even though about. They then 'import' the virus to their unsuspecting spouses.

Others faculties are so dulled by alcohol that they do not even differentiate between a woman and a child.

Last year a man who raped a four year child and left her with ghastly injuries, which necessitated several operations, with others still in the pipeline to try and repair the gross damage he inflicted was been sentenced to life in prison.

Paul Ngure, aged 22 was sentenced on his own guilty plea, confessing that he had been drinking with the girls mother and were to spend a night of passion but she disappeared and when he went to her residence instead found the hapless child, whom he carried away and abused the whole night in a nearby plantation.

Here a man fetching fodder for his livestock found her unconscious in the morning. Meanwhile Ngure had gone on to continue drinking more alcohol in his bloodstained clothes.

In mitigation Ngure had this to say after failing to find the girls mother, I instead "in my drunken stupor, I took the small child." This child was treated a the Nairobi Womens Hospital.

If this and similar incidents cannot wake us up, then what will it take? Mums the word usually means quiet - a secret held, a promise not to tell. But in this case mums need to wake up and galvanise the President to declare alcohol and other drug abuse a national disaster.

Mums and their daughters bear the biggest brunt of this scourge and it is time too they insisted that President Kibaki share his good news about why he stopped drinking with his fellow Kenyans and to begin to preach the message of moderation. If not we will continue denying to - death!

David Ogot is the winner of the Kenya Union of Journalists, 2003 Drugs Reporter of the Year Award. A recovering alcoholic he can be reached at goinghomedotcm@yahoo.com , Website: www.goinghomekenya.org