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"id": 211606,
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"speaker_name": "Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o",
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"id": 193,
"legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my fourth point and recommendation, which is very important, is that in order to use NHIF, it must be seen as a source of domestic savings. If that Fund is seen as a source of domestic savings, this idea of getting the so- called \"surplus\" to invest in those buildings will not arise! Domestic savings, in a healthy economy, should be used for capital formation. If somebody, in his mind, thought that, that was capital formation, but did not do his internal rate of returns well, and we have an economist as the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, my dear Hezron Nyangito, then, of course, they did not consult the Permanent Secretary. If you want to use that fund as a source of domestic savings, you will not foolishly invest it in land which is not going to be productive for ten years. You will put it into something that is going to earn interest with sound internal rates of return! So, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I do believe that if we had that perspective of how to use both NHIF and National Social Security Fund (NSSF)--- When I was the Chairman of Public Investments Committee (PIC) in 1994/1994, we recommended that! So, it is something that should be in the knowledge computer chip of the Government. In this day and age, to hear something like that being done by NHIF is extremely unfortunate! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the other issue which I wanted to raise with the Ministry, and this is my fifth point, is why the Government of Kenya does not control the price of drugs in private pharmacies. I lived in Addis-Ababa in the 80s - between 1984 and 1986. If you go there even today--- You better fall sick in Addis-Ababa and not in Nairobi because drugs are very cheap there. The Government has a policy. Pharmacists and drug stores are not allowed to charge above a certain threshold for drugs because generics are available! They should substitute if those other drugs are too expensive. It is becoming too expensive for people to buy drugs in this country. There must be a policy. You cannot allow the area of health to the so-called \"free market\". A free market is a very poor allocation of resources if it is left untamed. This is known even in developed countries. In this country, pharmacists are getting away with murder. Definitely! Now the Government has done a good thing of providing basic drugs like anti-malaria drugs and so on, for free, but we should review our whole drugs policy in this country and make sure that when Kenyans fall sick and go to a drugs store, by all means, they afford the drugs. July 31, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2861 Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my last point, which I want to recommend to the Ministry, is that we have universities. Thank God, we have many universities now, but we need more. As an hon. Member said this afternoon, these universities should, really, help us train preventive health care personnel. These are people who do not require too long of a training. These could be former teachers or former civil servants who can be taken in for a six-month course in public health care or preventive health care, and then be used in our dispensaries and so on, because if we got it right in terms of preventive health care, we would not be needing so many drugs in our economy. The basic thing is to get preventive health care right, and personnel. Fortunately, it is not very difficult to train people to help us get our preventive health care system right. We had better partner with universities in this county to get the personnel we need. It is cheap, it is doable. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}