Health Crisis In Our Counties Should Be A Matter Of Concern
Written by Odhiambo Shem on February 15, 2022
By Simon Onyango:
Life is one of the most precious commodities gifted by God. To have a good life, you must have good health, but this depends on the individual’s behaviour and the amount or level of resources invested by the Government in Health System – more so the latter.
According to World Health Organization, 50% of children under five who die of pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria globally are in Africa. The data further reveals, less than 2% of drugs consumed in Africa are produced on the continent, meaning many sick patients do not have access to locally produced drugs and may not afford to buy the imported.
In Kenya alone, over 43% of the population lives in poverty, and therefore, could not timely access appropriate and affordable medicine, vaccines and other health services (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) .
With the coming of devolved governments in Kenya, we knew this could bring to an end the health crisis in the country – health facilities and medics were brought closer to the people, but to the surprise of many, it brought confusion and even gave birth to numerous challenges in health system.
County Governments have been experiencing difficulties in delivering health services to the people as intended by the devolution, many administrations have been raising alarm on the shortage of resources being allocated by the National Government to the county governments resulting to poor health services.
Apart from under – sourcing by the National Government, there have been other ups and downs like corruption, health workers strike, shortage of medical facilities, lack of essential medical equipment and many more. Do you think there are no solutions to mitigate these challenges? The answer is No, the problem is that, someone somewhere is sleeping on his or her job.
In my opinion, Kenya is rich in necessary resources to ensure proper health delivery to the people. If under – sourcing by the National Government is the problem to all these, then it is high time for the government to realize that the majority of the people depends on the local health services and therefore, it’s their right to be served well by the government.
I therefore, call the two governments ( National and County Governments) to sit down and come up with proper strategies to ensure the people of Kenya are served well as mandated by the constitution.
