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{
    "id": 1029548,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1029548/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 276,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "the counties to improve their health facilities. Even today you will find counties reporting that they have got 300 bed isolation units, when you investigate you will find they have counted beds lying in dormitories of secondary and primary schools that have been shut down. What a great shame. If we can try to lie with a straight face to justify or score some bonga points politically. The reality is that many of our counties do not have more than 20 ICU beds and where they have, they are taken up. It is not just the facilities but also the processes we have built. Today, if you went to a hospital, for example, the Jaramogi Oginga Teaching and Referral hospital and you have gone there with malaria you will first be subjected to a COVID-19 test whose results will come out in four days. You are lying in that hospital for four days awaiting COVID-19 result and you will die by the time COVID-19 results come back. Nobody is going to public hospitals because we have built certain processes and put in place bureaucracy that seem aimed at denying wananchi services. It seems that we are deliberately turning wananchi away because we k ow we do not have the capacity to manage COVID-19 in those institutions. This is a moment for us to reflect on health policy. I am glad that there is a conversation going on. When it comes to health human resource, let us have a Health Service Commission. We have seen in my county the Health Committee came to intervene in a situation where county health workers have not been paid yet these are frontline workers. One person, a frontline worker in my county died of suspected COVID-19 condition. They put their necks on the line and yet we are not paying them. Sometimes you find the county assemblies defending the County Executive for not paying health workers. If someone should be the first in line when it comes to payment during this pandemic should be health service workers. In fact, we should put a covenant that Senators should not get their salaries until doctors have been paid because these are the most essential workers during this pandemic. We must find a different way of managing our health service professionals. I do support the idea of establishing a health service commission that would provide a centralized pool and an opportunity for cross county transfers, monitoring and evaluation of the health, human resource sector. Procurement must be decentralized. We have seen the KEMSA heist. Unfortunately, some of our friends in the political space are the ones who walk around to KEMSA with empty briefcases and come out with briefcases full of cash. This is a shame and we have had this habit of eating health funds from HIV/AIDS, malaria, Tuberculosis and now to COVID-19. Some of the richest men and women in this country made money in the 1980s and 1990s by establishing Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that were meant to fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis using Gavi funds and funds from other global bodies. It is shameful to steal money meant to provide medication and services to the sick. That is a sure ticket to hell. Madam Temporary Speaker, our economy has received the biggest beating in the last 12 years. We are in a recession. Our revenues are falling. Our debt is rising. Our gross Domestic Product (GDP) is contracting. We are soon not going to be a middle- income country. This is because a middle-income country is defined as one with a per capita GDP of $2000 and above. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}