Thirty per cent of the national budget is assigned to health annually, a level below the disease burden as 80 per cent depend on government funds for treatment.
Amref’s Joachim Osur said this on Thursday and added that the most expensive non-communicable
disease to treat is cancer.
Osur, the organisation's technical director for reproductive, maternal and child health,
said each family has at least one member suffering from the disease.
“There is need to increase the amount of funds allocated for health services in the country because NCD patients still seek treatment in public health facilities," she said.
The work force challenge must also be addressed, Osur further said at
Sarova Whitesands in Mombasa on Monday, during a journalists' training on health reporting.
“The workforce is not offering quality services as some institutes for medical training are not qualified, therefore release an unqualified workforce to the society,” he said.
The director said the number of people admitted to some institutions also affects the quality of training as resources are strained.
He added that for practising doctors, unethical behaviour
such as drunkenness needs to be addressed as most county hospitals are affected.
"The severe workload may be one of the reasons that forces them into drinking," he said, adding
the workforce, resources and funding issues cut across Africa.
"In Zambia for example, 10,000 patients are handled by two doctors," he said.
Osur also noted that most patients are mishandled due to lack of resources.
"The most affected in public hospitals are pregnant women followed by accident patients. Women are forced to share beds whereas others even delivered in an unhygienic environment," he said.
Regarding financial resources, he said a
doctor or nurse with no management training cannot be assigned the role as cases of misappropriation will increase and there will be no accountability.
The director accused the government of failing to collect data,
forgetting how useful the information is to the health system's performance.
"Data on health status is not routinely collected affecting annual planning," he said. "Data provided by the Health ministry from time to time is repeated over the years. The numbers keep changing but the outcome does not."
Osur noted proper statistics are required as some cases go unreported due to the work overload.
“A nurse will fail to report cases of two abortions in a day because they might be said to be carrying out the abortion, which messes up the data collection," he explained.
He added that the health workers may also not have the time to record data as they have to attend to patients.
Osur also highlighted the matter of wrong diagnosis and and prescription of medicine, which he noted result in the disease development to severe stages and the death of patients.
He added that medics are paid poorly, saying this is the reason most of them would rather work abroad.
"Service delivery in terms of availability of ambulances on call is also an issue of concern. Most public hospitals have no fuel for the ambulances and some have no equipment and resources to cater for a patient on arrival to the destination," he said.