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{
    "id": 561972,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/561972/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 216,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Dr.) Kibunguchy",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 294,
        "legal_name": "Enoch Wamalwa Kibunguchy",
        "slug": "enoch-kibunguchy"
    },
    "content": "have well established referral units in every constituency in this country. Those units should obviously have ICU and blood transfusion units, but a lot more things like theatre, good wards especially for children and maternity units. That will be more holistic than just narrowing and zeroing in on just those two aspects of ICU and blood transfusion. Let me go back to devolution. As representatives of Kenyans and as people who were elected to come to this Parliament, and seeing what is happening to the health sector and we are watching, the health sector is wobbling. When I trained as a doctor, there was never any time when you could see health workers, doctors and nurses going on strike. That is happening in this country. Health is in serious trouble and we need to wake up. If it means changing the Constitution, so let it be so that we can revert the health sector to the national Government. Let us leave the counties to deal with the very primary aspects of healthcare at the community level. When it comes to curative services in terms of personnel and human resources, that must be a national function so that the national Government knows where the shortages are and where they can deploy doctors. As it is happening, you find a county like Lamu does not have a single doctor. I read about it the other day in the newspapers. We are talking about an issue that, in my view, should be a national disaster as I speak now. We are now handling the Health Bill and we shall try to incorporate some of these suggestions in the Health Bill, but in the long-run, we must get the health sector to become a national function. With those remarks, I support. If the Member will come up with a Bill, we would like to bring in quite a number of amendments, so that rather than it being so narrow in terms of ICU and blood transfusion, which are noble and excellent things, we expand it. I have no objection to that, but we need to have a referral unit in every constituency that will be able to handle most of the emergencies. Not all, but most of the critical emergencies. Without anticipating debate, in two or three weeks, we will be talking about training of personnel in terms of emergency care. There is a Motion that has been brought here by my friend, Hon. Susan. When we come to the units in each constituency, then we want to ensure that the personnel who are working there, at the very least, have been trained and they know the aspects of emergency care before everything else. I have talked about personnel. In this country, we have many universities that are now training medical doctors. We have the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) that has opened campuses in very many places. In my view, medical personnel should not be a big issue. It is the distribution of these people that is the biggest issue. But in terms of training, we now have universities and colleges, especially the KMTC, that are training some of our people in healthcare, but distribution is the biggest problem. We must find a way of dealing with the issue of distributing these medical workers between urban and rural areas. People are so scared to work in some rural areas these days because of the whole issue of insecurity in the country. I agree with the spirit of the Motion, but the scope needs to be expanded and made more holistic. With those remarks I support."
}