The government through the Ministry of Health is committed to improving the livelihood of Kenyans through provision of efficient and high- quality health care system.
According to a recent report by Kenya Health Service Delivery Indicator (KHDI) Survey 2018, Kenya’s progress in achieving key maternal, infant and child health targets has been slow.
However, with the realization of the Big 4 Agenda, Kenya has set out to make rapid progress towards improving health care.
Speaking during the launch of KHSDI survey report 2018/2022 on Thursday in Nairobi, the Ministry of Health Director General, Wekesa Masasabi said that for Kenya to make rapid progress towards Universal Health Care (UHC), a health system needs to have skilled human resources, minimum inputs such as drugs, commodities and infrastructure, financing, leadership and governance and health information system.
“Inadequacy of skilled human resources for health care remains a major bottleneck to improving quality health care. Therefore, there is need to provide knowledge to health workers by offering quality training in order to improve the wellbeing of our citizens,” said Masasabi.
The findings from the report showed that basic equipment is not available in more than half of health facilities in the country since only 40 percent have quality facilities.
“We want to ensure that medical equipment is available since most of the population access care at public health facilities,” Masasabi added.
The National Treasury Principal Secretary (PS), Dr. Julius Muia said that government through the vision 2030, has strived to improve the livelihood of Kenyans through sufficient and quality health care which is in line with the constitution of Kenya (2010) which stipulates that every Kenyan has a right to the highest standard of healthcare services.
Muia further called upon the government to increase its investment in human resources for health in provision of clinical guidelines to health workers and diagnostic equipment to health facilities in both public and private hospitals.
“In acknowledgment of many counties have increased the number of health workers to address shortage of health providers, I also urge the County governors to be vigilant in ensuring quality health services are provided to the citizens,” said Muia.
The KHSDI report has been prepared in consultation with the government of Kenya under the Ministry of Health. The SDI heath survey team visited a sample of 3, 094 health facilities across Kenya, with data collection from all the 47 counties remaining the largest to date.
By Purity Mumbua/Charity Kanyoro/Joseph Ng’ang’a
