Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 598372,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/598372/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 124,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Tongi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2611,
        "legal_name": "Richard Nyagaka Tongi",
        "slug": "richard-nyagaka-tongi"
    },
    "content": "Flying doctors should not be an option at this point in time. There is need to enable the private sector like Africa Air Rescue (AAR) Health Services who are doing a lot of good work out there. I know they have a corporate social responsibility. Sometimes they go out of their way to even ferry patients who cannot afford to pay for their services. Because they have an obligation to the community and all Kenyans, they have done it. There are many other institutions like African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) and St. John Ambulance which are doing noble work. How I wish we had one which is also charged with that responsibility! Maybe we should empower the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to offer some flying services so that in the event of an emergency, because they provide medical services, they are able to ferry their patients from point “A” to point “B”. This is because evacuation is very critical in medical services. Evacuation in this will be moving patients from point “A” to point “B” where they are going to get specialised treatment. That would be both local and abroad. Before we go outside the country, we should do it and perfect it. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, having talked about external evacuation, we have also lost a lot of money as a country partly because of poor planning. I do not support this idea where every patient who wants to get specialised treatment first thinks of going to India. Every other day, I am called to a Harambee for somebody seeking medical treatment in India. As a country, have we ever looked at the statistics to find out how many patients who have gone to India for treatment have come back as a success story? You will be shocked that most of those people do not live to see a year after they have come back from India. In the process, we are losing a lot of money which should have been used locally. What if we encourage the Indian Government to set up healthcare facilities locally? We can provide an enabling environment and facilities for them to set up a hospital in Kenya to take care of those cases. The cases which make people go to India are related to cancer and accidents. We can have the Indian Government setting up a hospital maybe in Kajiado where there is still a lot of land or in Kisii. I have some land in my area which I can donate to the Government to set up a facility where the Indians can come and practise. We can get into partnership with them so that the country can earn a percentage of the money they make while they take back the other percentage as their profit on investment. They can put in some money as we also make our contribution in terms of money, land and infrastructure. That way, we will have the facility locally and we will end up creating employment opportunities for our people. That will be a winning formula than encouraging medical tourism where people are going to India every other day. Even if you have a simple condition which can be managed locally, you first think of India. We need to think outside the box and put up some of those facilities in Kenya. Healthcare services should never be a preserve of people who have money. We have seen patients in emergency situations being chased away from hospitals because they cannot raise the deposit. We also need to encourage those who are gainfully employed to have medical insurance. Medical insurance is not an option any more. We need to provide an incentive to those who can afford medical insurance so that they can take it. More importantly, we need to make it a policy that a patient should never be turned away from any hospital for whatever reason until the patient has been given first aid. How a patient is handled at the initial stages of an emergency determines whether the patient’s life will be saved or he or she is incapacitated for the rest of his or her life. As a country, we need to have that policy to encourage hospitals to give our people first aid care. Thank you once again, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for the opportunity to speak to this wonderful Motion. I support the Motion as amended. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}