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"id": 1020897,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1020897/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Homa Bay CWR, ODM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Gladys Wanga",
"speaker": {
"id": 590,
"legal_name": "Gladys Atieno Nyasuna",
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"content": "I thank the Departmental Committee on Health which has helped in shepherding this Bill, conducted public participation and brought in views from various stakeholders to make this Bill richer. The Constitution of Kenya 2010 in Article 43 provides that every Kenyan has a right to the highest attainable standards of health. One of the diseases that has come in to hamper this right to health is Cancer. Cancer is not only a health issue, but also results in economic catastrophe for the families of the affected persons. This Bill follows a Motion that the House passed in 2015 which was moved by myself and was speaking to the training of Oncologists. The Motion provides that the Ministry of Health should provide funding for training at post-graduate level for one Oncologist at least for every one of the 47 counties. Once you finish your training, the Motion says that you do not disappear elsewhere. You go back to the county where you are from and provide services there for a period of time. Following the passing of that Motion, I am pleased that the Ministry of Health introduced a local four year Masters course in Medicine in Radiation Oncology, a training program that has so far trained a number of oncologists. If you want to know the shortage that we are facing of oncology professionals in this country, we have about less than 40 oncologists, only 16 radiation oncologists, ten medical physicists, 27 therapy radiographers and three nuclear medicine physicians for 47 million Kenyans. Those are the oncology professions that we have in this country. To say that it is a shortage is an understatement. If you try to seek medication for cancer, you would wait on queue for long periods of time. The few oncologists we have are mostly concentrated around Nairobi and other big cities. So, if you are talking about having cancer in Marsabit, Homa Bay, Gwassi, Vanga and Kwale, it becomes almost a death sentence. This Bill provides for three key things. First, it makes provision for training of health cadres in the specialized medical field of oncology. This includes Medical Oncologists, Pediatric Oncologist, Radiation Oncologist, oncology nurses and physicists and other healthcare providers. Secondly, it seeks to include cancer treatment as part of the provision of primary health care. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, if you walk into a dispensary or a health centre in the village such as Nyagoro Health Centre in Rangwe Constituency where I come from, if I say that I am having pain in my chest, they will probably just ask if I am coughing and release me. But that may be a sign of something deeper. So, at this very low level, our medical providers should be trained. The clinical officer or nurse that you find there should check, perhaps, if you could be having breast cancer, check for the lump, conduct the CS cervix and basic diagnosis. That is because the difference in recovery for cancer for those who are diagnosed early and late diagnosis is worlds apart. Whether you die of cancer or not is dependent on how early the cancer is diagnosed. If it is done early, you can seek treatment and survive more easily than if it is diagnosed late. Therefore, if we introduce Cancer diagnosis and treatment as part of the primary healthcare package, then you can capture this early. The other aspect of this Bill is the issue of e and tele-medicine. This has also been widely covered within the Health Act. If I am sitting somewhere in Moyale with a patient and I am not sure what the patient is going through, as a general practitioner in Moyale, I should contact by email, zoom, Skype or any e-technology, a doctor at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) to advise me on how best to move the patient forward. This is what we are talking about here. We have been in this Covid-19 season. It has exposed the weaknesses in our health care system. There are deep weaknesses in our healthcare system that Covid-19 has exposed. When we asked counties to disclose how many Intensive Care Units (ICU) beds they have, we realized that many had zero. They had to start to arrange how to get ICU beds. So, while it has 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."
}