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{
    "id": 596781,
    "url": "http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/596781/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 174,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Dr.) Simiyu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 141,
        "legal_name": "David Eseli Simiyu",
        "slug": "david-eseli"
    },
    "content": "The county governments are equally mismanaging healthcare to the extent where when a county buys drugs worth Kshs70 million, it calls the Press and takes a photo as they set off the truck to go and deliver the drugs. Before I came to Parliament, I was in private practice. There was somebody who was doing a study on the cost of healthcare in Kenya and picked my clinic as one of his study centres. When he went through my patient records, it came to transpire that in a year, my clinic, which was a one-man show, was prescribing drugs and medical commodities worth Kshs30 million. So, when a governor buys drugs worth Kshs70 million and goes to the Press with that, you can just see the shallow thinking at the county level. They imagine that drugs worth Kshs70 million are a lot. It can be very few drugs. Healthcare is the most devolved function and most of the money that is sent to the counties should be in the healthcare sector. But the governors are mishandling it. There is some serious propaganda which, unfortunately, even some Members of this House have bought, that this Bill seeks to return healthcare to the national Government from the county governments. That is far from the truth. This Bill seeks to deal with just the constitutional mandate of the national Government. The national Government is supposed to take care of national referral services. The Constitution does not say that national referral services are restricted to the Kenya National Hospital (KNH) and the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) only. National referral services should be available to all citizens of Kenya. That means that the national Government must get closer to the citizens of Kenya. That means that it must have presence even in the counties to offer the national referral services. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}