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{
    "id": 1338197,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1338197/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 274,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Garissa Township, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Dekow Mohammed",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker for giving me this opportunity. The Bill, as tabled, seeks to de-congest the main referral hospitals and Level V hospitals. The situation currently is that all the health facilities, that is, health centres, Level IV, Level III and Level II hospitals are abandoned. They lack the necessary facilities. This Bill will support the UHC programme. As one of my colleagues has said here, this arrangement worked in the past. I am a witness to it that it worked in the past but it was abandoned after devolution. As it is now, those in the villages and grassroots level can only seek medical services from the main referral hospitals or Level V hospitals. Most of the medical facilities at the grassroots level are not taken care of by the county governments. The county governments concentrate more on the referral hospitals. They have abandoned health centres and dispensaries on the ground. For my constituency, I have launched NHIF programme of up to 1,000 families in the villages. It is to serve the most vulnerable people. Once these funds are retained at the health facilities or health centres, the management of those facilities will easily improve and medicine will be available on the ground. I must commend my county government for one of the facilities they are piloting now to see whether this programme will work. They have allowed one of the health centres to collect money from both the patients who pay cash and those who have the NHIF cards. The money is retained in the health centre and it is now working. For that reason, I support this Bill and I believe that is the direction we should take. We should ring-fence the management of these funds at the facility level to provide quality health to our people. That is the way to go. With those few remarks, I support the Bill."
}