Kenya: Thousands of doctors and other medical personnel should remain employees of the national government to ensure equity, a committee of the Senate has proposed.
Chairman of the Committee on Health in the Senate Mohammed Kuti
The Senate’s Committee on Health wants counties to handle the development of healthcare infrastructure including building of hospitals and stocking them with the required medicines. It is hoped that retaining health sector workers as national government employees will ease the staffing headache for counties, especially those classified as hardship areas.
“The staffing of healthcare facilities must remain a function of the national government,” said Mohammed Kuti, the chairman of the Committee on Health in the Senate.
There has been much anxiety among medical personnel on their employment status and remuneration when the provision of healthcare is fully devolved, meaning that they would be employees of their respective county governments.
This is among the recommendations of Mr Kuti’s committee after a first-round tour of the North Rift, to establish the readiness of the counties to provide healthcare services.
It is also expected that the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) will transform its operations and act like a giant drug store to avoid dumping of old stock in county healthcare facilities.
“We want Kemsa to operate like a drug store to ensure hospitals get value for money. The hospitals would only purchase on demand rather than use the kits system,” added Kuti.
Under the kits system, Kemsa would source for medicines and distribute them as packages to different hospitals nationwide, using a predetermined formula.
The committee plans another tour of medical facilities in the North Rift area. “We want to investigate the claims of expired supplies which we received while on our tour,” said Ms Zipporah Kittony, a member of the committee in a separate interview.
Expired stock
Kemsa had on Wednesday defended itself against accusations by the Senate team that a medical supplies procedure that has since been replaced may have been the cause of delayed deliveries and the expired medical stock.
… prior to the adoption of the pull system of supply – which took a while to roll-out to the whole country – expired stock at some public health facilities could have been realised from the abolished system,” reads a statement from Kemsa in a paid-up advert Thursday.
In the pull system, healthcare facilities placed orders to Kemsa detailing their specific requirements on the different types of medicines. Kemsa would not determine how the drugs in its stock were pushed to hospitals.
By Moses Michira, The Standard
