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    "id": 443414,
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    "content": "can make this House a House which passes laws that will help our key sectors in the economy to grow. Madam Temporary Speaker, I also want to thank the seconder of the Motion, Sen. (Prof.) John Lonyangapuo, who is a professor of Applied Mathematics. He has actually done very well in an area that is not traditionally his. We hope that we can benefit this country through Motions like this. I cannot forget to thank Sen. Otieno Kajwang, a great lawyer and the only Member of the Minority in the House this afternoon. He has also made very useful comments. Madam Temporary Speaker, as I have said, health is critical to the development of our nation. The use of telemedicine can help us solve a lot of the problems that we are facing in the health sector today. It can even cut costs in several ways. Telemedicine will not only help a doctor at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) to diagnose or even supervise a treatment at Voi Sub-County Hospital. Therefore, it will make it unnecessary for a patient all the way from Voi in Taita-Taveta to come to Nairobi, but it will also help a connection between Voi, Nairobi and New Delhi at the same time. This is because we have seen most of our patients coming to KNH. If they cannot get help there, they have to be flown to India which is one of the countries that have actually made a lot of strides in Medicine. So, if we connect our counties, I see a broader cost-cutting issue in the health sector, not only within our country, but also in the context of making patients be treated in their counties even under the supervision of international doctors and surgeons, where surgery is required. Madam Temporary Speaker, telemedicine will also help in the teaching of Medicine. At the moment, besides having very few nurses and doctors, we also have few professors and teachers of Medicine. With the hemorrhage of people like Sen. (Prof.) Lesan into the Senate and hon. Dr. Nyikal in the Lower House, the situation is dire. In fact, formerly it was the specialized areas that Sen. Kajwang was talking about that were suffering, like Urology, Periodontology in Dentistry and some of the fine areas like expertise in heart diseases. But now even general Medicine is suffering. Therefore, now that we have universities teaching Medicine, some of which are outside Nairobi--- I even wonder how they are managing sensitive courses like Medicine, because I know that the few professors and senior lecturers in Medicine are in Nairobi. I know this because for many years I was a member of the University of Nairobi Senate and management boards. I used to sit in the board as Dean of Law and know from the College of Health Sciences, the strain and burden which is there on qualified people in that college. It is very big even for an old university like University of Nairobi. Now I am told that we have the Kenya Methodist University which has a medical college, Maseno University which has some medical related course and other universities outside Nairobi that are offering health sciences. Telemedicine, therefore, can help the few professors that are left in our universities to be able to service several universities without leaving Nairobi. The idea of lecturers teaching in Mombasa in the morning and then flying to Nairobi in the evening is also making us waste a lot of man hours. If there is telemedicine, you just need an hour or two, you are in Nairobi and you address students at Meru Campus of Kenya Methodist University, and that is as good a The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}