• Dr. Anisa says most National government policies do not work well for specific counties.
• County policies to improve UHC.
Image: ALPHONCE GARI
Counties should be allowed to come up with their own specific policies for the Universal Health Care programme to be success, Health CECs from the Coast region have said.
Coast Region Executive officers for Health caucus chairperson Hazel Koitaba yesterday said counties need tailor-made policies. She spoke during the Kilifi County 2nd Annual Scientific Forum at Mnarani Club.
“Every county has unique health needs. If we can be allowed to partner with medical training institutions in the counties to come up with courses that suit us then we could increase the number of health workers in our hospitals," Koitaba said.
Kilifi Health executive Anisa Omar backed her. She said said county policies would improve delivery of services since the devolved units know the challenges they face.
“Health is a devolved function. We know the problems we face and the ones of the communities we serve. County assemblies are supposed to make policies and draft bills for us to implement," Anisa said.
She said research institutions in the counties should be able to intervene on issues arising within the communities.
"In Kilifi, we have a lot of research being done at the Kenya Medical Research Institute and Pwani University. We do research to get answers," Anisa said.
She said currently, community health volunteers are not trained to handle the Universal Health Care programme. Anisa said some of the people nominated by the community are Form 4 and Standard 8 dropouts.
“Community health volunteers don’t have any basic health training. But we can talk with with training institutions to have them domesticate the curriculum to accommodate the volunteers," Anisa said.
She said training the volunteers will provide additional manpower to the health sector which is overwhelmed.
"Once trained, the volunteers will be able to handle emergency cases because they are skilled. They will know when to refer refer problematic cases in the villages. By so doing we will be able to reach every household in the community," Anisa said.
"We cannot have doctors moving from house to house. This will be next to impossible since we do not even have enough doctors in our hospitals. We need specialisation in hospitals as well as basic training at the grassroots level."
Lamu Health executive Anne Gathoni, representatives from Kemri, Amref, the Ministry of Health, Aga Khan University, ICRH-Kenya and the Cardiac Society of Kenya were present.
(Edited by P. Wanambisi)