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{
    "id": 916376,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/916376/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 450,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Keiyo North, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. James Murgor",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1754,
        "legal_name": "James Kipkosgei Murgor",
        "slug": "james-kipkosgei-murgor"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I rise to second. As a Committee, in our oversight role, we visited all these national referral institutions and engaged the staff and management in depth over what is happening in those institutions. We did not go and sit in the boardroom only. We visited everywhere in those institutions, from the kitchen and the wards up to the mortuaries. The Committee has come up with this Report. Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital is the only mental referral hospital. If you go there, you will wonder how the institution is. It is too old, and yet it was established during the colonial time. The buildings and the roofs are leaking. The walls have developed cracks and there is serious understaffing. There is shortage of drugs in the hospital too. The situation is the same in terms of equipment. This is the case and yet you have to carry out various investigations on a person who has mental illness. This is because you do not just come to a conclusion that that individual is mad. There are other diseases which can cause mental disturbance. Somebody can appear mad because of a tumour in the brain, and yet that hospital has no equipment to perform CT scans. Even X-ray machines are old. We went to the Spinal Injury Hospital, which has 35 beds and yet it is supposed to be a national referral hospital. Knowing the number of accidents in this country, that is a serious inadequacy. After all, it caters for the whole of Eastern Africa. It suffers from the same problems namely, understaffing, lack of equipment and funding. The other one is Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). Although it is the main referral hospital in the country, it is really sad that is also understaffed. There is shortage of about 700 nurses and 150 doctors. There is shortage of staff in all cadres and in terms of equipment. Every now and then, CT scan equipment and cancer machines break down. It is difficult to repair them because the institution is underfunded. I hope you recall, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, that there was a case where a patient who was not supposed to be operated was operated. I know people were accusing the doctors and the nurses as being on the wrong. Actually, they were not. If you have an institution which has a shortage of 700 nurses and 100 doctors, what do you expect? You would expect such a problem to occur. All these challenges I have pointed out are experienced even at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH). Although this institution is trying, it is still understaffed like the other hospitals. Even the negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) have not been 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."
}