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{
    "id": 1109391,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1109391/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 354,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13165,
        "legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
        "slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
    },
    "content": "opportunity to receive proper medical attention when they are not feeling well. They would be able to be taken to a working public health facility be it a dispensary, health centre or even a county referral hospital. Madam Temporary Speaker, however, I can speak authoritatively because I know this for a fact that many of our health facilities have collapsed. On many occasions, we just focus on the hardware and we forget one very important aspect about it. It does not matter how good the equipment you put in many of our hospitals. If you do not handle the human resource, as is being proposed by Sen. (Dr.) Ali then you are missing the point. There is absolutely nothing that you are solving because a hospital is only as good as the doctors, nurses and health workers in that particular institution. If they have not been properly remunerated, kitted in terms of the equipment and materials that they need to execute their work, then there is absolutely nothing that you are doing. Madam Temporary Speaker, in this day and age, I do not know this is the tragedy of our time. That many of our doctors are leaving the country and justifiably so. By the way even if I was one of them as well, looking at how doctors are being treated in this country, you cannot begrudge any of them who have chosen to try and ply their trade elsewhere. This is because most of our doctors, nurses and practitioners in the healthcare industry are some of the best trained in any part of the world. By the time you see the government of the UK approving that Kenya supplies them with 20,000 nurses, it means that they are satisfied with the kind of training curriculum that is being afforded to them. They know these are people that are properly trained. What happens after we train them? We come and start pushing them between one office to the other. Madam Temporary Speaker, I saw today a post of I think Gov. Ngilu in Kitui County who has withheld salaries of doctors who have gone to increase their knowledge. They are on study leave. When a doctor goes on study leave I do not think they have gone to study farming or business management skills. They have actually gone to seek better knowledge so that they can treat citizens better. They need to be paid for it. It happens in every other profession. Career development is part of human resource practices that are respected in every part. Yet you find governors treat them as they care. How many times have we seen many of our medical practitioners having to demonstrate to even just get protective equipment that they use while treating people in hospitals? It is unfortunate. It is a shame of this current leadership, all of us together bound as one. Sen. (Dr.) Ali has given us at least an exit through which we can try and resolve this issue. Madam Temporary Speaker, never mind that this advisory council is at policy level only. Even that is just a good beginning, because it points out to the issue that I have spoken to earlier; that this is almost a challenge similar to the one that we had with Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) teachers. This is where you find that in one particular county, how they are being treated is separate from how another county handles that issue. This creates competition amongst counties. There are counties where, today, they do not attract medical professions because they know that they are least paid. They are"
}