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{
    "id": 1081765,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1081765/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 256,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nandi Hills, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Alfred Keter",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2514,
        "legal_name": "Alfred Kiptoo Keter",
        "slug": "alfred-kiptoo-keter"
    },
    "content": "in this field who understand these things more than the majority of us. I saw many organisations, including the Bloodlink Foundation that brought their submissions and memoranda. If you look at any Bill, the input of stakeholders is almost 40 per cent of the output that you get from the Bills. I remember the Bills that were before us yesterday like the Finance Bill that is still before us. Many issues were raised by the members of the public through different organisations and individuals who appeared before the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning to present their issues. It also points out to me the failure of our society which has collapsed and needs legislation to stop people from stealing blood. You do not need to have a legislative framework to stop anybody from misusing, capitalising or making blood an enterprise. Sometimes I find it inappropriate when a patient gets to hospital and he is told that unless 10 of his relatives donate blood, there will be no surgery for him. That is grave. The society is too rotten that you need to legislate to stop someone from thinking. In a morally upright society, you do not need anybody to tell you as a doctor or an owner of a hospital that a patient needs emergency attention. If it is about blood, you hear people making it an enterprise. That is not only criminal, but immoral. When you need blood, it will not be like diesel or petrol that you can postpone and say you will not drive your car for a week before you fuel it again. When you need blood, it is a matter of life and death. This Bill, as I have said, is long overdue. It should have come like five or seven years ago. It is still addressing many challenges that we are having with devolution. In an environment where health is a fully devolved function, every county government should take it as its responsibility to have a blood transfusion centre to manage their own blood and have satellite centres in sub- counties. This is the only product that most people donate for free. We were doing it when we were young and we are still doing it now. It is always free. We need to reorganise. This Bill is addressing that. You just need to organise. This Bill is addressing the challenges of safety and privacy so that donors are not mistreated in any way. As I summarise so that I do not take much time, this Bill points out many issues. It points out issues to do with devolution which is not properly managed and issues to do with the Senate, which is trying to duplicate the roles of the National Assembly while forgetting their mandate. You remember when we came here in 2013, they were trying to use Standing Orders to create positions like the Leader of the Majority Party. There is no constitutional provision for a Leader of the Majority Party in the Senate, because the Senate represents county governments. The senators sit as 47 votes, not 67, so that if there are three or four senators from one county, it is the substantive senator who has a vote. So, the Senate cannot have the same functions as the National Assembly. The architects of the Constitution knew that. When the senators realised their mandate was minimised and they wanted to be like an upper House, they tried to compete with the National Assembly. That is the reason we have such challenges. If they were carrying out their mandate, by 2014 we should have had blood centres in every county. We have allocated a lot of resources to county governments to establish blood centres, including cold rooms; only to be told that there are only two cold rooms in Kenya—not within Nairobi or North Rift or western Kenya, but in the entire country— and this is unfortunate. These are services which are rendered in every county across the Republic. Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker."
}