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{
"id": 838784,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/838784/?format=api",
"text_counter": 138,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "ODM, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) James Nyikal",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Protection Act, the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Act, the Nurses Act, the Kenya Medical Training College Act, the Nutritional and Dietitians Act and the Pharmacy and Poisons Act. With regard to the Pharmacy and Poisons Act, my colleagues would like to understand that the Act is regulating personnel, namely, the pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists. At the same time, it regulates drugs. So, we have the two. In other countries, they have been split. Even when you come to drugs, you have veterinary medicine and human medicine. There is a tendency to think that you can deal with them differently. The danger is that if we misuse drugs in animal health and they get problems like resistance, it will be transferred to human beings. Again, it is important to make sure that the veterinary personnel are involved in this. If you look at the Clinical Officers Act and the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Act, they are personnel that are doing the same thing at various levels yet we have two Acts separately for them. So, there is need to put all these together. When you look at the Radiation Protection Act, we have radiation in health which is being used to diagnose and treat people and yet radiation is also important in nuclear medicine, if you are going to have nuclear energy. So, how are we going to put this together? That is extremely important. We have to look at that. Again, with devolution, we now have to see how to support the system. The systems that were intended to be managed from one point are now being managed from two different points. Therefore, there has to be coordination because the service is the same. If you look at things like immunisation, we have to be careful on a policy on it. If you look at the Health Act 2017, there are critical issues. All these Acts have to relate to the Health Act. For example, if you look at the position of the Director-General, the title itself has to be incorporated in all the Acts. It is now a different title and not the Director of Medical Services but the Director-General. So, that change has to go into all the Acts. There are also conflicts that relate to the position of the Director of Medical Services in all the regulatory Acts. The Director of Medical Services is the administrator to some extent of all these Acts yet he is also supposed to be part of the regulation. So, there is a conflict of interest. One of the things we are doing is to split the position of Director as an administrator and the position as a regulator in law. So, you will find those in all the Acts. If you look at the issue of health technologies, the machines that are being imported, syringes, needles and blood transfusion equipment have to be controlled yet not all of them are within one law. If you look at the X-ray equipment, the tendency will be to look at them under radiation and protection. On syringes, the tendency will be to look at them under the Nurses Act. We have a situation where many of these laws are conflicting and the cadres are fighting over this. When people import, for example, some equipment, more than one cadre are levying charges on them. That is extremely important. We have all regulatory bodies that are regulating the professions. They are over 20 and what is being proposed now is that we have an oversight authority that will bring all these together. Finally, if you look at the area of Mwongozo, many of these laws are not in line with it in terms of the number of board members and the appointment of the CEO and the chairman. There is no similarity on how they are done. Now, these laws are bringing in the need to ensure that there is conformity in how all these laws operate."
}