It is a disturbing picture to see Kenyans dying in the full glare of doctors and nurses, who refuse to attend to them because they are on strike, reason being, they are opposed to the devolution of health services. One question begs, what happened to the sense of national hood and the true citizenship we share as Kenyans. Doctors just like other professionals take an oath of service, …I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone,….I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel, But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts… reads part of the oath. In essence, doctors are givers and protector of life, preservation of the purity of life remains fundamental in the practice, which is also a moral duty. Every Kenyan has a right to demonstrate and picket, but unnecessary strikes by civil servants should not be the road to take.
Fifty
years after independence the Kenya still suffers from poorest systems of health
care characterized by inadequate facilities, disappointing doctor to patient
ration, corruption and highest negligence from the medical practitioners. Today
only two referral hospitals exist, the Kenyatta National Hospital and the Moi teaching and referral hospital, the two in a total
population of 44million Kenyans are not only overwhelmed but a great pointer to
a sorry state of health in this country. This perhaps explains the reason to
why many well-off Kenyans opt to travel to other countries to seek specialized
treatment.
To
address this pitfalls in the dying health care system, the drafters of the
constitution placed the running of the health care system under the county
government, history informed them that a centralized health care is inefficient
and ineffective, in this regard, the principle behind devolved service is to
promote social and economic development and provision of proximate, easily
accessible services throughout the country. This means that counties will
therefore develop requisite structures and bear the full responsibility of
planning, financing and monitoring health service delivery. More so, hiring,
staffing and disciplining health workers will be a prerogative of the county
government. You and I know that each 47
counties have a county cabinet secretary in charge of health, this is the
person doctors will work with and there should be no unfounded fears.
Devolution
of health should be supported by doctors and all Kenyans of sound mind not to
fight it, although doctors raise many questions including lack of proper structures
in management of health at the county level and inability by the county to meet
salaries and allowances, this argument is anchored on quick sand, it must be
understood that it’s the first time Kenya is having devolved units and fruits
of devolution will take time to before they are enjoyed but the future is
bright. Different counties have unique problems including health care facilities, some even have one or two
district level hospitals, this is what will push governors to develop county
integrated plans that will ensure construction and equipping of county level
referral hospitals and other middle level hospitals, in fact counties can pull together
and build state of an art facilities to serve that block, for instance Kakamega
, Busia and Bungoma can pull together and build a modern, well equipped and staffed referral facility to serve that block,
the same can be done at Nandi, Uasin Gishu and Elgeyo.
A
devolved health care will ensure responsive, prompt, effective, impartial and
equitable health serves to Kenyans. Governors will be able to know how many
doctors and nurses their county has, number of health facilities, ambulances
and budget on the premise of priority. This will be a big step towards
eliminating corruption in the supply and delivery of drugs, health equipments to
hospitals which sometimes have been ending up in neighboring countries. Doctors
and nurses should therefore not develop cold feet towards devolving health
care, let them dialogue with both the national and county government. Public
hospitals serve mostly common Kenyans who have no access to private facilities
that are a preserve of politicians and
people of high economic cadre, it is therefore important that we develop an
affordable, dependable and efficient health systems that will respond to Kenyans
health needs, this can only be achieved if we support devolution of health to
the fullest.
