The Kenya Clinical Officers Association (KCOA) has promised to address challenges facing the health sector and has requested the government to form a national joint task force on health that can look into the challenges and recommend solutions to further streamline the sector.
Speaking at the 24th Annual Scientific Conference, held at the Sai Rock Beach Resort, Mombasa, Peterson Wachira, the National Chairman of the KCOA stated that in the last 10 years, the sector has had more than 100 strikes caused by challenges that have not been resolved conclusively.
“The sector faces an employment framework challenge on how to employ health workers commensurate to the population,” said Wachira.
“We are here to address some of the challenges affecting the health sector ranging from the welfare of workers to policy management of human resources, Wachira added.
He noted that the meeting was also a starting point for the health workers to discuss and learn on how to improve their service quality and align themselves with the universal health coverage pillar.
On his part, Joseph Chebii, the Secretary General of KCOA, put emphasis on the mental health and wellbeing of professionals in the sector.
He said they had laid to rest 4 colleagues over the past 3 months, a situation occasioned by unaddressed mental health challenges.
“We have a problem with issues of mental illness and this is attributed to work stress, alcoholism and drug abuse. We call upon the government and stakeholders in the industry to help us address this matter,” said Chebii.
He also noted that most of the mental health issues are environment related.
The President of the KCOA, Albert Aiti, stated that the objective of the conference was to look at the professional welfare of the clinical officers.
He noted that the Association expects to share scientific ideas and draw solutions from the conference that would help achieve quality health service.
“Most of the counties have not been meeting the 15% threshold of the budgeted allocation into health out of their resources as per the Abuja declaration,” said Aiti.
The Association also called on the president to constitute a national joint task force to help them address their challenges and come up with definitive measures that will improve health and service delivery.
Prioritization of health in the country, emergency preparedness and response are also some of the key subjects expected to be discussed by the medics during the conference.
The annual conference meeting is expected to end on Friday 18th November 2022.
By Fatuma Said
