Ministry to table a Bill to guide on quality of health care

The Ministry of Health (MoH) has developed a Bill that will give guidelines on the quality of care to be offered across all public health facilities in the country.

State Department for Public Health and Professional Standards Principal Secretary (PS), Mary Muthoni, said a survey conducted at the 14,000 public health facilities spread across the country revealed gaps in service delivery which the Bill seeks to address.

The PS said the survey has shown that health care is not just about having the infrastructure and advanced equipment, but also about the quality of services being offered at the facilities in order to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

‘We can build as many hospitals as possible. We can have the most advanced equipment and human resources, but if we don’t factor the quality of services being offered then we cannot achieve UHC,’ he said.

The Bill which has been drafted, she said will spell out the guidelines on service delivery adding that all stakeholders have been brought on board to
give their input before it is tabled in the National Assembly for approval.

Speaking in Kisumu during the launch of the 14th Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) national sports competition, the PS said the government was on course to ensure Kenyans from all walks of life have access to quality health services.

To ensure that health workers’ concerns are addressed, the PS said President Dr. William Ruto has appointed a task force to look into the human resource for health and give recommendations to overhaul the sector.

‘We want all stakeholders including training institutions like KMTC to give their contributions and send memoranda to the task force on how health care workers should be treated,’ she said.

The games, he said, will not only help the 3, 000 students from 85 KMTC campuses to unwind, but also to network and engage with the Ministry’s top leadership, to have their concerns addressed as they prepare to join the labour market.

‘We have witnessed protests by the Generation Z (Gen-Z), over the l
ast one month and as an institution, we feel that this is a golden opportunity to engage our students, so that we contain some of these issues at our level before spiraling out there on the streets,’ she said.

Source: Kenya News Agency