According to the World Development Report, 58.3 per cent of the Kenyan population live on less than Sh226 ($2) per day.
Medicines in Kenya are very expensive and many people cannot afford them.
High prices are particularly burdensome to patients in developing countries where most medicines are paid for out-of-pocket by individual patients.
Most of the politicians, during this time leading to the election, are happy to attend burials because they will find an opportunity to campaign.
They prefer dead voters than the living. But the elephant in the room is the cost of medicine for the sick and those admitted to the hospital.
lt is prudent to save those alive in hospitals by buying them medicine than to attend their funerals and talk politics.
Overall, affordability of treatments for chronic conditions was much less than affordability of treatments for acute conditions.
The burden is especially great for a family needing treatment forseveral conditions at the same time.
Victims of medical detention tend to be the poorest members of society who have been admitted to hospital for emergency treatment, and detention can push them and their families furtherinto poverty.
They may be subject to verbal and/or physical abuse while being detained in health facilities.
The practice of detaining people in hospital for non-payment of medical bills deters healthcare use, increases medical impoverishment, and is a denial of international human rights standards.
At the root of this problem is the persistence of health financing systems that require people to make high out-of-pocket payments when they need healthcare and inadequate governancesystems that allow facilities to detain patients.
Universal health coverage cannot be achieved while people are experiencing financial hardship through their inability to pay for healthcare.
Therefore politicians are called to help the living more than the dead because the living will vote for them more than those who have died.
The writer is a director, Career Organisation
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
