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"id": 379158,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Anyang’-Nyong’o",
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"id": 193,
"legal_name": "Peter Anyang' Nyong'o",
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"content": "the time the patient was referred to hospitals in Nairobi and because the liver is such a critical organ, the other organs, like the kidneys, had been affected. She was put on dialysis, but because she was so weak, she had to be taken to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). By that point in time, two major organs in the body were affected; that is, the kidney and the liver. Of course, you are in a very precarious situation and you end up losing your life. So, these issues that Sen. Mukite is raising are very important. Finally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the issue that Sen. Mukite is raising here is very sad indeed. When you have lost your relative or friend and then rather than being given the body to go and dispose of it honorably in a dignified manner, it is detained because you do not have money. This is the last element of humiliation of human beings. I have been a champion of this for a long time that we should make life easier for Kenyans by having universal health coverage. I really do not understand why there is so much resistance to this proposal. There are many ways of having universal health coverage; one is for the Government to foot the bill. We know from our budgets that our governments cannot bear the entire bill. That is the surest way to set ourselves up for difficulties and problems. The best way out is for us to have cost sharing, where those who are able, like ourselves, put in more money in the kitty than the poorer ones, and then the Government will put in money for the poor. We will then have a universal healthcare system where everybody benefits in the spirit of Sessional Paper No.10 of 1965, which was called “Mutual Social Responsibility.” This Sessional Paper envisioned a situation where we take care of our neighbour. If we do not take care of our neighbours when they are well, we will still take care of them when they are sick. We will call for harambee to collect money to help out someone. Now, why do we not rationally bring this money earlier in a much more systematic manner or in a universal healthcare coverage system and avoid the kind of problems that Sen. Mukite is bringing up in this Motion? Therefore, in the final analysis, whereas we are solving all these global problems of our health system, establishing a complaints board – a kind of a health ombudsman – at the county level is the most practical way of getting wananchi to go to a body that will listen to them. It will also deal with county governments on health issues. You know that now, health is going to be largely the problem of county governments, except for a few referral hospitals which, when I was the Minister, I had proposed that they be 22 so that counties do not have to bear a very big burden. But I think that proposal has been shut down by the Commission for Implementation of the Constitution (CIC). The health burden is going to be largely a county affair. The county governments had better prepare themselves for a lot of pressure from the people. Rather than that pressure being expressed haphazardly, I think Sen. Mukite has done us a wonderful thing of saying “let us structure the complaints and, therefore, restructure the response. Let us, in every county government, establish a section of a health department that looks at the welfare of the people in the event that the response of the health institutions in taking care of the health of the people, fail.” When a doctor does something, like leaving a pair of scissors in a woman’s womb after caesarian section, it is a serious matter. But it happened at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) in the early 1960s when the first Chairman of the Public Service Commission, Mheshimiwa Ngaira – if you remember, he was an The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}