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{
    "id": 498659,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/498659/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 349,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "November 5, 2014 SENATE DEBATES 44 Sen. Karaba",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker for allowing me to contribute in support of this very timely Motion. This Motion is very emotional in the sense that we are discussing a life of a person and the state in which Kenyans are living in today. We are discussing the desperate attempts by the Government to rescue those who are sick and they cannot be rescued. The Ministry of Health ranks among the service Ministries just like the Ministry of Education. For the Ministry of Education not to have been devolved, it means that there was something that was not considered. We should have even devolved national schools to counties which cannot afford to maintain the services. Provincial schools should have been fitted in the former districts which would not have coped. When the Transition Authority (TA) devolved the health services to the counties, they should have considered many things before that decision was made. Madam Temporary Speaker, there are many hospitals in pathetic conditions. I can quote Kerugoya Hospital in my county. If you go to that hospital, you will find patients sharing beds while others are sleeping on the floor. It does not matter whether one is coughing and another one is smiling; they are all dumped together. Some hospitals do not have hospital uniforms and patients sleep without blankets. The wards are very cold, particularly during the months of June and July. Some of them do not have driers to dry their clothes and so, they sleep in wet clothes. These hospitals should at least be elevated to the level of the former district hospitals. We should implement the terms of this Motion to the letter so that we save our people who are suffering. Those of us who are in Nairobi are at least better off. How about those people living in areas which are very far from the capital City? The other weekend 20 askaris were killed and to airlift even one of them was a problem. I know not all of them were going to die because of gunshots. At least a helicopter should have been provided to go and airlift the officers. We could even have hired the African Air Rescue (AAR) helicopters. We do not even have anything that can save somebody from a marauding lion in north eastern Kenya or in the Mara. If somebody were to be bitten by a snake somewhere in Tana River, he or she cannot be airlifted because those facilities are not there. Why are we not serious about our people? Our people depend on what we legislate in this House and that is the reason why this Motion has come so that we can exonerate ourselves from the blame and tell the Government that there is need to think about this problem. Madam Temporary Speaker, we have medical personnel who have been trained using a lot of Government funds. To train a doctor, it costs more than Kshs5 million at the University of Nairobi, but still they are not enough because there are so many people who need the services of doctors. These people will go for greener pastures because they have also suffered to become what they are and so they will not go to wherever the TA would prefer them to be, but offer services elsewhere. They will go to where employment is more lucrative, for example, overseas hospitals where the remuneration is more attractive than here in Kenya. The doctors and nurses work under very risky circumstances and yet we do not compensate them. They can easily be infected with any kind of disease while handling their patients, because they are the first ones who handle the patients. Before a patient 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."
}