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{
"id": 239012,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/239012/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. Kagwe",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Information and Communications",
"speaker": {
"id": 229,
"legal_name": "Mutahi Kagwe",
"slug": "mutahi-kagwe"
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"content": " Thank you very much, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I rise to support the Motion as well as to congratulate the Minister for Health for the excellent work that she has undertaken to do. She took over at a very difficult time when hospitals were having very many difficulties, but it is encouraging to see how far she has gone to bring sanity and, indeed, efficiency in our hospitals. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to touch on only two things related to this Ministry. The first one has to do with the issue of our doctors and nurses going overseas. Whereas this is seen as a problem in our country, this is also an opportunity! We also have an opportunity because we have so many people who are unemployed in this county. What is lacking is the capacity to train these people so that we can be able to export them and they can be of use somewhere in the world. This way, they will be able to send money back home. So, as we talk about brain drain, let us keep in mind that it is also possible to keep our brains in the drains because they have no work to do. Consequently, I think the Minister is doing the right thing in terms of increasing the capacity to train nurses and doctors so that they can be able to work both here and overseas. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, my second point is about the issue of how the Ministry of Information and Communications is co-operating and can co-operate with the Ministry of Health to ensure the sustenance and improvement as far as e-health is concerned. The work that we are doing in the Ministry of Information and Communications, including the laying of the fibre- optic cable and fibre optical arteries across the country into district hospitals and other places creates a massive opportunity as far as healthcare is concerned. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is now possible to envisage a situation where we can have e-surgeries. In other words, a doctor in the USA or in the UK can carry out surgeries with a doctor in Kenya if we finish the issue of laying of fibre optic cables, particularly the submarine cable that we are talking about. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, because of the lack of a lot of specialization in the country, it will be possible to make use of a specialized doctor overseas who may not have the time to travel to this country to conduct a surgery but to whom it may be possible to communicate with once we have done everything that we can as far as the fibre-optic cables are concerned. Therefore, as we do this work, we are not just doing it for schools, Government and the private sector. We also want to do it for hospitals. In that respect, the computerization of hospitals across the country, both clinics as well as district hospitals is an issue that we would like to assist the Ministry of health to undertake. For example, if you wanted to know the history of a patient, it used to be that, when you go to a hospital, you go with your little card and introduce the history of your illness to the doctor, and if the doctor is not the same one who treated you initially, then it takes a long time. But with computerization of hospitals, it will be possible to build data-banks with patient histories. Thank you very much, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I beg to support."
}