Health
The Senate Standing Committee on Health has reiterated the need to have more innovative initiatives at the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital (CGTRH) to improve service delivery.
Speaking during an inspection tour at the facility in Mombasa County, the committee chairperson Jackson Mandago said that the facility serves the whole coast region and thus the need to have additional resources for better service delivery.
Mandago said that the hospital offers exemplary service that can be compared to the leading private hospitals in the country urging Kenyans to rally behind the government’s call for universal health coverage in terms of contribution for the government to improve the facilities and services.
He said that the burden for the hospital is huge in terms of the human resource requirement, equipment and daily operational costs to buy drugs and pay utility bills, and only Kenyans can help fund for these needs.
“All of us know that CGTRH was a provincial hospital that was serving a number of counties in the region and because of that the burden for this hospital is so huge. This hospital is also the only public health facility in the country with a pediatric accident and emergency unit,” he said.
He added that apart from the pediatric accident and emergency department, there are more innovative initiatives at the facility including the cardiology department.
The chairperson said at this department, procedures that would only be done in level 6 facilities in the country are conducted and these are procedures that many Kenyans would go out of the country for hence the need for Kenyans to support the government’s call on universal health coverage in terms of contributions to the health sector.
“If we improve our healthcare system then most of the services that Kenyans would move out of the country for, would now be offered in our country. We cannot expect as a country to improve our services if we do not improve our facilities and to improve our facilities we need resources to be deployed to have the required equipment so that people can benefit and to reduce the cost of medical facilities,” he said.
The visit aims at understanding the operations and challenges faced by the facilities and for fostering collaboration to improve healthcare services and labour conditions in the Coast region.
Senator Mandago said that the Senate understands that health is a largely devolved function hence the need to ensure that they work closely with the county governments to improve health services.
He added that the committee was pleased with the exemplary services offered at the CGTRH comparing it to leading private hospitals in the country.
Among the challenges that the committee noted the hospital include the issue of understaffing in the sense that a section of doctors desire to further their studies outside the country but cannot be released since the hospital gets a hard time in finding a replacement or many at times the trained doctors end up working in other countries in search of greener pastures upon their release.
“We are asking the staff to bear with the county government as we address this matter of training with the national government and hopefully as we begin the new financial year we could be in a position to resolve various issues related to training for our health stuff in the country,” noted the chairperson.
The County Executive Committee Member for Health in Mombasa County Dr. Swabah Ahmed said that the county government has sent an expression of interest to invite vendors for digitization of all the 47 health facilities in the county that will pick up on the referral system.
This she said will embody the primary care health network that is also being advocated under universal health coverage. She added that the county government has also made an expression of interest in terms of procurement of equipment for all the 47 facilities either on placement leasing and direct purchase.
“These are in the agenda of the governor in terms of health, whereby he promised to provide quality healthcare in all facilities and also to pick up on a patient coming from level 1 to be traced all the way to level 5 if need be,” she said.
She said the new developments will be rolled out in the next financial year, 2023/2024.