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{
    "id": 1110314,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1110314/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 300,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Kasanga",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13185,
        "legal_name": "Sylvia Mueni Kasanga",
        "slug": "sylvia-mueni-kasanga"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I thank you for giving me this opportunity to support the Health (Amendment) Bill (Senate Bills No. 26 Of 2020). It is good that one of the health professionals has brought this Bill to the Floor of the House. That way, the fraternity recognizes the importance of supporting their own to come to Parliament so that they can influence legislation and policy. I therefore congratulate Sen. (Dr.) Ali for this timely Bill. I had an opportunity to interact with the doctors when I chaired the Ad-Hoc Committee on COVID-19. They were shocked that whereas we thought that we were going to receive reports on how counties are managing the COVID-19 crisis what we got was complaints of doctors on what they were going through. The doctors painted a sad picture of the challenges that they have been going through since the devolution of health. In fact, there are counties whose problems were spanning as far back as when the promulgation of the new Constitution happened and how the transfer of functions was not done properly. It is sad that some of those things are still affecting our doctors to date. There were many cases where the county governments had not been remitting the statutory deductions of the doctors. One of the complaints that we received is that even the doctors themselves could not access the healthcare that they are providing because their statutory deductions are not being remitted. Those healthcare professionals where therefore not eligible to receive healthcare which is a travesty. Our Committee was shocked at the many complaints that we received considering that we were expecting to deal with COVID-19 crisis. We now had to divert our attention to look into the issues affecting the doctors which we later transferred to the Standing Committee on Health of the Senate. Madam Temporary Speaker, although the independent commission that the doctors really want cannot happen. This proposal in this Bill is a good stopgap measure to a number of the issues affecting the health professionals. I remember all the issues that the healthcare professionals talked about. All the counties that we went to, save for one or"
}