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{
    "id": 929292,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/929292/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 285,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Halake",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13184,
        "legal_name": "Abshiro Soka Halake",
        "slug": "abshiro-soka-halake"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, as you know, health issues are very time conscious. More importantly, it is also a socio-economic rights issue as per our Constitution. Article 43 states that every person has the right to the highest attainable standard of health which includes the right to healthcare services including reproductive healthcare services. This Motion is not only timely but also what I like about it is that it starts with asking us to put in place the right frameworks that would then enable e-health and telemedicine as it were. Madam Temporary Speaker, teleconferencing, tele-video, telemedicine or e- health can ride on ICT to address some of the issues I have just talked about like accessibility, especially in marginalized and in our rural areas. The fact that Sen. Pareno comes from Kajiado County could have contributed to her thinking out of the box and bringing this Motion so that it can help the people of Kajiado, Isiolo - where I come from – and in most of our rural set ups where the health infrastructure does not exist. Madam Temporary Speaker, why can we not then hook up into innovative ways of providing diagnosis, treatment and continued learning by our healthcare providers as well as just linking all these to give access to our citizens and then to do it cost efficiently so that it is sustainable? On many levels, this is a very great and feasible idea. From the way she has described to us, in Rwanda and Uganda, it seems clinically doable even in our own set up. Madam Temporary Speaker, as we look at the areas of medicine that can really lend themselves to e-health, many come to mind. Even if we just decide to offload the easier ones like dermatology or gynecology - although gynecology and reproductive health is not as easy and is wrought with complexities - but if we did that with some of the ones that are easy to do, we could make sure we are efficient and offload some of the burden from our healthcare providers where sometimes in one hospital you have one doctor working day and night and by the time it is midnight, they are very exhausted. Just recently, we passed the Mental Health Bill. I kept wondering if this could be an area that the mental health can lend itself, whereby if someone is feeling depressed or suicidal, they could video call and speak to somebody on real-time. They call it a synchronous approach. Madam Temporary Speaker, there are areas of medicine that could very easily use ICT. It is about time we looked at the policies that govern this. There are challenges and barriers to telemedicine as we have seen in other parts of the world where they have implemented this, even in the First World where they have advanced infrastructure and are using tele-medicine for more sophisticated diagnosis and surgeries that are using artificial intelligence and robots. The local public health, which is basic healthcare system using community health workers, can lend itself. I am glad that the prayer is actually to put in place the right frameworks and policies so that we get it right. Madam Temporary Speaker, the number one thing that I have read about telemedicine and e-health is sustainability. Lack of sustainability comes in when resources die out or certain governments put in place seed money to try and do pilot projects and as soon as that seed money is finished, then it just dies. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}