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"id": 22790,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/22790/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Prof. Anyang-Nyong’o",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Medical Services",
"speaker": {
"id": 193,
"legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
"slug": "peter-nyongo"
},
"content": "My Ministry recognizes that it is the responsibility of the Government to ensure that all people have access to health care, more so, the poor, if we are to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Further, the Constitution makes access to health care, as I have said, a right. Therefore, we have no excuse, whatsoever, but to provide proper financial resources for healthcare. High household out of pocket spending remains a major barrier to healthcare access in our country. It is estimated that in Kenya, households contribute over 30 per cent of total healthcare in expenditure. This is not sustainable; it makes more Kenyans slip into deep poverty. In order to address this problem, my Ministry is recommending the strengthening of the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) and hence, its transformation into a National Health Insurance Fund. We have already proposed to the Cabinet that those changes take effect immediately, as soon as all legal requirements have been undertaken. Mr. Speaker, Sir, user fees are a major source of funding to the public hospitals, as the allocations from the Treasury are inadequate. However, my Ministry recognizes and acknowledges that user fees are, no doubt, a burden to patients, especially the poor and, quite often, user fees are a barrier to access to healthcare. So, the sooner we can implement social health insurance rather than impose user fees to our people, the better. There are already examples, as hon. Members will know that, when patients go for healthcare, they may pay or register for health attention. But when they go into the hospital, they cannot pay for diagnostic services which are critical to being given healthcare services. So, the sooner we can dispense with or do away with user fees, the better. We can do that through the establishment of a social health insurance scheme. My Ministry continues to respond positively so that payment of user fees does not undermine the poor in their access to healthcare. At the hospital level, waivers and exemptions provisions are available to those who are unable to pay the required fees. But as hon. Members will know – and I have talked to many and my friend David here knows – hospitals managements have begun to be very reluctant to waive fees because they must have resources to run those hospitals. That puts me and my fellow hon. Members in a very peculiar situation because where, for example, an hon. Member wants to release a dead body from KNH and the hospital refuses, the hospital is right. But, at the same time, the hon. Member is also right in demanding that the poor fellow should be put to rest as quickly as possible. But then the question of finances comes in. We must find a way of implementing social health insurance so that neither the hospitals, nor hon. Members, nor Kenyans at large are put in that precarious situation. It is, therefore, our proposal to transform the NHIF into a national health insurance fund whereby both the employers and the employees contribute to the fund at a rate of 1.5 per cent. That contribution by the employees will be matched by the employers in equal amount. Let me now come to budgetary allocation for the financial Year 2011/2012. The gross Budget under Vote 11 for the year 2011/2012 has been adjusted marginally upwards from the approved budget of Kshs31.5 billion last year to Kshs31.6 billion this year; an improvement of only 0.4 per cent. Hon. Members should mark that! We only got Kshs120 million improvement in our budget last year. Our Budget last year was already too far from meeting the expectations of Kenyans and the expectations of this House. Secondly, of the total budgetary allocation of Kshs27.5 billion which will cover our current expenditure, only Kshs4.1 billion will cover Development Expenditure. In other words, we have Kshs27.5 billion for Recurrent Expenditure and Kshs4.1 billion for Development Expenditure. Therefore, when hon. Members ask the Ministry to provide their hospitals with ambulances, know ye from these figures that we were not given any single coin for ambulances for a whole year. So, if there are any heath care facilities which need ambulances, know that we do not have resources for that."
}