Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 725278,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/725278/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 165,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Dawood",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2572,
        "legal_name": "Abdul Rahim Dawood",
        "slug": "abdul-rahim-dawood"
    },
    "content": "operations. He does much more than what even an eye doctor would do. There is also Mr. Festus Riungu who used to check my eyes, but he is not a doctor. He is a clinical officer. We thought that clinical officers were not really important. Some of them are treating patients now that the doctors’ strike is going on. They are making people move forward. There is the Board that Hon. Sang has mentioned, but as we are aware, the health function is devolved. He would have added one member from the County Executive Committees (CECs) to the Board. Maybe he ignored it or did not want to have them there. There is also the clinic and medical centre. Hon. Sang has defined a clinic, but there are some definitions we do not understand. A medical centre should do much more than a clinic. Why would we ignore the fact that diagnosis and dental treatment can be done in a medical centre? On the quorum of seven out of 10 members, we need to see how we can reduce that because many times, we may not get a quorum for the Council to transact business. We probably need to have two-thirds of the members and not seven. The Bill proposes that a clinical officer who wants to do private practice has to keep his clinic open for eight hours or more in a day. That is very inhibitive. It should be removed completely because there is no way a clinical officer can sit in his clinic for eight hours in a day. He may be needed outside or may be visiting patients outside his clinic. So, that provision needs to be removed completely. There is also another provision in the Bill to the effect that a clinical officer can only treat diseases listed in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth schedules where the Council makes recommendations. A clinical officer who has served for 10 years and has been proven that he can do the work which has been specified in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth schedules should be allowed to treat each and every disease listed there. If we have it that they cannot treat other diseases, what will happen in the rural areas where we do not have doctors but clinical officers? So, do we allow people to suffer because there is no doctor there? If a clinical officer who can treat a disease is not allowed in law, he would not want to be jailed. Hon. Sang can have a look at that. There are disciplinary cases where the Council will have power to renew or remove someone from the register. Before they do that, they should give the people charged a chance to defend themselves. There is nothing like that in this Bill. They should be given a chance to defend themselves. This goes a long way in training. We need, as a country, to look at how we are going to facilitate the Kenya Medical Training Colleges (KMTCs). We have not allocated them enough money. We have a shortage of places in the colleges, and in many places we do not even have a KMTC. So, I would like to see the Government increasing funding to the KMTCs so that we get more students to be enrolled so that we can have more clinical officers graduating to treat our people. As you know, it takes a long time to train a doctor. A doctor takes about seven to eight years to be trained whereas a clinical officer takes between three to four years. So, we need to allocate more money to KMTCs so that we can have more clinical officers. The doctor to patient ratio in this country is very low unlike in other countries. I believe we want to be a middle income country where the patient to doctor ratio should be much lower. I agree with what we are talking about concerning private practice. We should license clinicians. This will ensure that people are aware that when they go to a clinic or a medical centre which is not manned by a doctor, the clinician there is trained and is a holder of credible certificate. The certificate should show that the person has been trained and is authorised to 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."
}