Establishment of a Health Workers Commission will help to solve numerous human resource challenges facing the sector.
Murang’a Woman Representative Sabina Chege has said the commission as proposed in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report will ensure uniformity in operations of major hospitals across all counties.
Chege said a health workers’ commission if established will ensure proper deployment of medical specialists in county hospitals, something which is currently missing.
County hospitals, she noted are struggling to employ medical specialists who are not enough saying there has also been a challenge in payment of doctors among other health workers in some counties.
Some medical specialists, the county MP said, can only be found in some hospitals hence numerous referrals from county health facilities to Kenyatta National Hospital.
“The idea of establishing a health workers commission is ideal since the commission will effectively handle human resource matters of doctors among other health practitioners,” said the legislator who is also chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee for health.
Chege observed that currently there is big disparity on how counties are staffing health sector saying in some county hospitals there are no specialist doctors hence cases of numerous referrals.
“The commission will be able to deploy doctors to various hospitals across the country thus ensuring specialists are well distributed across the country,” she added as she commissioned new offices of Amica Sacco in Kandara on Saturday.
She noted that hospitals above level 4 should be handled by the commission as county governments manage health centres and dispensaries.
“This matter on health will be deliberated soberly to ensure that a solution is found and provision of better health care is attained,” she added.
Meanwhile, Chege asked the government to release the funds for health, which were factored in the supplementary budget to support blood transfusion in the country.
She observed that after main donors who were supporting blood transfusion drive pulled out, many hospitals currently do not have blood for emergencies.
“Shortage of blood in our hospitals is occasioning death of patients who need blood. Majority of health facilities are depending on individuals who walk to the hospitals to donate blood,” said the legislator.
Chege said she has prepared a bill which will enable the government have a semi-autonomous body, which will be mandated to spearhead blood donation, and storage to ensure there is blood always for patients who need it.
“Our ladies who undergo operations and patients suffering from cancer really need blood and as parliamentary committee for health we want to fast-track the bill to be in place early next year to address the issue of shortage of blood in the country,” added Chege.
By Bernard Munyao
