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{
    "id": 915746,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/915746/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 218,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Makueni, WDM-K",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Daniel Maanzo",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2197,
        "legal_name": "Daniel Kitonga Maanzo",
        "slug": "daniel-kitonga-maanzo"
    },
    "content": "Therefore, we need to make sure that hospitals are properly facilitated, so that they can handle large volumes. Another good way of doing it, as I have just said, is to devolve health further and make sure that these services are either given to the counties or the national Government takes back any other hospital which becomes a referral one in every county. The four hospitals that we have here are sufficient to serve Nairobi and its environs. It would be better if we devolved this. I know Hassan Joho, the Governor of Mombasa, has done very well with his hospital there. He has improved it. He has assisted many leaders whose people are in Mombasa and get issues there. You can see that from the standards he has put for that hospital in Mombasa, he can easily graduate it to a referral hospital and that can serve Kenyans better. Looking at the Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital, it is a very sad case for the mental cases which are coming up today. Sad to say, most of them involve young people. Some of them even come from well-to-do families. They are put under pressure at home. They are put under pressure by several things. When their minds go berserk, they are banished to the MNTRH. Others have originated from court orders in the Judiciary or have been referred there from the prisons. The place is congested. Their land has even been taken away. I wish the NLC had done something before it came to an end. I hope a new one will be formed quickly so that the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KURA) who took their land and did a road could easily return that land or compensate them with another piece of land, so that this hospital can be expanded and its facilities developed. People there have mental cases. Any family which may have had a case of that nature has gone through a very difficult time. Managing people with mental problems is not easy. They can easily injure somebody. They can easily injure a neighbor, stray and get bitten by dogs. They can be attacked by people who do not understand them, probably thinking they are thieves. They are exposed to all manner of danger and it is not their making. Anybody, even a Member of Parliament like me for one reason or another, can have a mental issue. Therefore, it is good to have a better structure on how to manage mental issues in the country. Probably, other hospitals could develop departments in this area. We do not even have enough personnel in this field. Not many people are willing to go and work in this field because of the dangers it involves. Sometimes, even the patients can attack the doctor when he is treating them. For that matter, we have to reconsider the matter of the MNTRH. It has a history. It has lasted in this country for even over a century. So, you can imagine how old this hospital is. Very little improvement has been done since Independence. It is only fair that we take care of mental health cases properly. That is why we have many suicide cases. Many suicide cases eventually turn out that the persons were mentally unwell. People do not understand them or they do not understand what is happening to their world. They are unable to conduct business properly. This is because something is going wrong with their brains and the way they handle themselves. They find themselves committing suicide. If we had proper facilities and people can detect those problems early enough, we would save many lives, especially of young people who find themselves in this situation. Many spinal injuries at the National Spinal Injury Referral Hospital (NSIRH) are from motorbikes and road accidents, especially where somebody was not wearing a safety belt. This has also grown extensively. I believe we will come up with a proper insurance system for motorbikes so that it is affordable to them and the people they carry. Therefore, in case people have injuries of whatever nature or fatality, they can be compensated. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}