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{
    "id": 1235876,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1235876/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 212,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kwanza, FORD–K",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Ferdinand Wanyonyi",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Hon. Temporary Speaker, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. I also want to thank Hon. Didmus Barasa. In my local language, I call him guka, meaning grandfather. I want to say that this is a very important amendment that Hon. Barasa has come up with. I believe each one of us here has handled cases of relatives, neighbours or constituents requiring assistance to be moved from one facility to another. I have a case of my brother who was transferred without my knowledge to another facility because the doctor who was treating him had an interest in that particular facility he was being transferred to. I ended up losing my elder brother! For you to move a patient from one hospital to another, you must check facts about where one is being transferred to. You need to establish whether or not the receiving hospital has all the facilities which were lacking in the host hospital. In my brother’s case, it was done haywire. There was no reason that was given for the transfer. We have many cases of patients being referred to India. I am dealing with a case of a patient who is in India. I do not know how the family ended up sending the patient there. I am told the hospital in India has an agent in Kenya. His work is just to get patients transferred to the hospital in India. Now I am being requested to attend a Harambee to raise money for the patient because the family is not able to pay for the medical facilities. Therefore, we need to have some bit of discipline. We are not medical doctors but we regulate for this country. It is only fair that we say enough is enough, given what we have experienced as Members of Parliament. Whether it is a funeral or whatever else, people come to seek help from Members of Parliament. I get very many phone calls inviting me to Harambees and fundraisers. But you will find out that the patient dies afterwards, say, after three or more referrals. A very important thing that Hon. Didmus did not include in his amendment is the NHIF. We as Members of Parliament need to insist that those who have elected us here have the NHIF and it will help them a lot. As long as the patients know that Hon. Didmus will assist them in paying hospital bills, they are referred from Bungoma to Mombasa and they just go. Most of the time, the patients die at the facilities they are referred to. The Seconder of this Bill has said that she had a case where somebody was just sitting there and ended up having a problem. So, let us have some sanity. I think this amendment Bill is coming to instil some sanity in whatever we do so that we do not have cases where people are moved from one facility to another anyhowly just because of the personal interest of doctors. They are professionals and we respect them, but some of them over-stretch their professionalism by doing what I think is not the right thing. With those few remarks, I thank Hon. Didmus for coming up with this very simple and clear amendment that will help our people. Therefore, let us support it so that our colleagues who are doctors can be guided. Without mentioning the name, I have a case where one of the doctors referred a patient to Uganda. You cannot believe that he referred a patient to Uganda because he had some interests there. Let us stop those kinds of things. To doctors, we are not criticising you, but we are saying that some of you are doing the wrong things. I support this amendment. Thank you."
}