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{
    "id": 1286166,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1286166/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 371,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Kisang",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2263,
        "legal_name": "William Kipkemoi Kisang",
        "slug": "william-kipkemoi-kisang"
    },
    "content": "About three weeks ago, I was in Iten County Referral Hospital. Out of seven health workers on duty, five of them are volunteers who are not paid by the county government. Basically, as soon as we pass this Bill and it becomes law and they retain their own source revenue, the committee can set aside a percentage of the resources from the facility and give a stipend as transport allowance. We want to see health workers who are volunteering be motivated to work. Mr. Speaker, Sir, in the past and even now, all the resources that are collected are taken to the County Revenue Fund (CRF) account. It is put in a pool, then the county executive decides how much they need to plough back to the facilities. This will help to motivate the facilities to collect and ensure the resources are put to proper use. I know my colleague, Sen. Wambua, talked about Clause 4 which states- “Subject to section 5, this Act shall apply to up to level 5 public health facilities in Kenya”. Levels 6 and 7; the Medical Training Referral Hospital (MTRH), the Kenya National Hospital (KNH) and Kenyatta University Referral and Teaching Hospital (KURTH) are already retaining their own resources. Those are parastatals. We are not interfering with them. Basically, they still have and use the resources they get to run the hospitals completely. We are talking about our county referral hospitals and below. That should not be an issue. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I have talked about the payment of stipends to our health workers who are assisting at the county level. There is an issue that Sen. Osotsi raised about not following the PFM Act. If you read the Bill, it says that all the penalties that are in other relevant laws, especially the PFM Act and the Public Disposal Procurement Act, will apply in this particular management of the resources. This is because you are not going to procure outside the system. You will procure using the financial management system that is running the accounting function of the county. Maybe where we need to check very closely is the KEMSA which is the source and provider of medicine for our counties. It is like counties have been forced to buy medicine from KEMSA. Yet, the medicine from KEMSA is more expensive than going to buy from other pharmaceutical companies. There are also delays. As soon as the counties pay them and make orders, KEMSA takes time to deliver medicine. We need to relook at this so that we make the supply of medicine competitive to our counties. We ensure that they get medicine in time from all pharmaceuticals, not KEMSA alone. The Government should not do business. We should allow the pharmaceutical business community to sell medicine to our counties and not KEMSA. That KEMSA thing should be closed. We believe this is a good Bill that will help us, especially on the Universal Health Care (UHC). Mr. Speaker, Sir, I remember during the time of Prof. Anyang’-Nyong’o, the current Governor of Kisumu County, as the Minister for Health, they attempted to start UHC, but it failed. They did a pilot on five counties, but they did not go far. I hope with these four Bills that are coming to the House, we will have a proper working UHC in our counties and our people will be very happy. We will not lose lives because of the --- The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard Services,Senate."
}