Healthcare in Kiambu county has received a boost after 77 additional nurses were hired to address staffing gaps and enhance patient care in various health facilities across the county.
The nurses, who were issued with appointment letters in December last year, are expected to begin work this month at various facilities across the county.
Kiambu county government last year advertised about 1500 job vacancies to address workforce shortages in its health facilities.
According to the County Executive Committee Member for Health Services, Dr. Elias Maina, the number of patients far outweighs the number of health care workers due to the rising number of patients seeking health care services from neighboring counties.
“We have an influx of patients visiting our Level 5 hospitals, that is, Kiambu hospital and Thika hospital; these are patients mostly from Nairobi County, Machakos County, Murang’a County and as far as Kajiado County,” said Dr. Maina.
The health CECM confirmed that the county will be recruiting more health workers including doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and clinical officers in the course of the year.
“We intent to give priority of the newly hired staff to be deployed to our busy facilities to reduce patient waiting time and enhance efficiency in service delivery” added the CECM.
He further pointed out that some of the county’s health facilities like Thika Level 5 hospital attend to up to 2000 patients daily in the out-patient department.
“Because such a huge number of patients compromises on the quality and efficiency of our services, there is need to improve on our human resource” he said.
Apart from hiring health workers, Kiambu County has since been making efforts to ensure residents get essential health services efficiently and effectively by ensuring all health facilities across the county are stocked with sufficient medical and non-pharmaceutical supplies, among others.
According to WHO, the prescribed health worker density ratio is determined as 23 doctors, nurses and midwives for every 10,000 people to attain at least 80 percent of skilled birth attendance as one of the indicators of the millenium development goals.
However, data shows that the health workforce ratio in Kenya stands at 13 doctors, nurses, and midwives for every 10,000 people.
By Grace Naishoo
