HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 211593,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/211593/?format=api",
"text_counter": 186,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Eng. Okundi",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 344,
"legal_name": "Philip Okoth Okundi",
"slug": "philip-okundi"
},
"content": "You need to be politically visible and tell your people what your Ministry is doing, and then her staff can follow her example. I think this must be said. Many times, as Members of Parliament, when we are commenting on a major budget like this one, we do not try see that the success of such an allocation depends very much on the person at the top; how that person dispenses the duties vested on that work. With regard to that, I wish to congratulate the Minister. The Government has done a good thing. The Minister and her people have done a good thing. The budgetary allocation for the Ministry has been increased from last financial year figure of Kshs16 billion to Kshs34.4 billion this financial year. This is an increase of nearly 90 per cent. It is a bold step in the area where we have shortage of resources; that they have seen the importance of the health sector to consume all that money. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is consistent with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which have eight key goals. Of these eight key goals, three are addressing the health sector. It really means that for us, as a Government to survive, we need to do something on the health sector. No healthy nation will fail. If we are healthy, we will do a lot for this nation. So, I think this is consistent and it will even help other partners to help contribute to the effort of this major allocation. Again, I thank the Ministry for addressing some of the MDGs in her Ministry. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister has mentioned a number of areas in which money has been distributed. One of them is the gazettement of rural health facilities. Here, the Minister is actually encouraging what we have been doing using the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) in our various constituencies. In my own constituency, we started with almost no facilities. There were only five health facilities, but we have now doubled them. These facilities need the legal framework backing. They need to be gazetted. Once they are gazetted, they should be catered for in terms of provision of medicines and personnel officers. Medicine should come from the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (KEMSA) directly to them. I am glad that some of these facilities are being gazetted. I hope their gazettement will be accompanied with regular medical supplies. The Minister has said, in her speech, that almost every three months, there will be new allocations of additional drugs to the health facilities which have been gazetted. I hope this promise is kept and that it really works. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister distributed quite a number of ambulances to the various district and rural health facilities. I wrote to her about my own constituency. Her reply was that when they get the next lot, they would think of the rural health facilities. I plead with July 31, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2857 her to provide us with an ambulance when they receive the next lot. This is something we also require because in my constituency, we also have rural-based sub-district health facilities, which require to be gazetted. Therefore, we should have ambulances serving the rural areas, so that they can move from one place to the other. As we all know, the road infrastructure in many areas in this country had really collapsed before the Ninth Parliament. I am talking about them with a lot of bitterness, because it has taken time for some of them to be repaired. Under these circumstances, the health facilities so created do not get proper attention because the patients cannot reach them in good time for health administration and drug prescription. So, under these circumstances, we need rural ambulances which can move from place to another ferrying patients and also distributing drugs. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister has talked about allocating some Kshs250 million in order to provide water in the health facilities."
}