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{
    "id": 355265,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/355265/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 319,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Serut",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 297,
        "legal_name": "John Bomet Serut",
        "slug": "john-serut"
    },
    "content": "Hon. Speaker, Sir, I remember that a medical scheme Bill was in this House during the Ninth Parliament. It was here again during the Tenth Parliament. I think all that the Bill required was panel beating by this House. This House, having been constituted by Kenyans in the way it is, and with the number of doctors and other professionals that we have in here, it is time the same Bill is re-introduced in this House, so that we look at it instead of dealing with this particular Motion, which might end up becoming a Bill and require us to come up with other pieces of legislation on medical care. If you have listened to hon. Members speak, they talked of issues of transport, emergency services in Government hospitals and bodies of deceased persons not being collected from hospital mortuaries. Looking at this Motion, it is very restrictive. It does not touch on those who die. If we have to deal with issues in the medical sector, including lack of drugs, we need to re-introduce the same Bill that was in this House earlier. Hon. Speaker, Sir, there is a lot within the health facilities that is not very good. Part of it is the issue of retention of identity cards by medical facility administrators, including Government facilities, in the name of cost-sharing. The Jubilee Government needs to come up with a good policy regarding what happens to those people who are not able to pay their bills after treatment. I think the best way is not to retain their identity cards, to ask for their land title deeds or to ask for other documents to be held. Another issue is that of detaining bodies of deceased persons. There is no value in a dead body. To us Africans, especially Kenyan Africans, a dead body is a symbol of many things. If one is poor, unless he is assisted by his or her Member of Parliament, he or she abandons her keen’s body to rot in the mortuary. It is high time the Jubilee Government came up with a policy of ensuring that medical institutions release all bodies to relatives for burial, so that the question of detention of bodies by hospitals ceases to arise. Hon. Speaker, Sir, I want to stop at this point and call on this House to re-think the issue of coming up with a comprehensive health scheme Bill, which was in this House earlier, instead of dealing with small pieces of legislation on health matters. Thank you, Hon. Speaker, Sir."
}