Kibwana's county shines in healthcare awards

Makueni County Referral Hospital is the winner of the Public Hospital of Choice award.

It beat Thika Level 5 and Emali Model Health Centre in that category.

The winners of the first ever Quality Healthcare Kenyan Awards were honoured at a gala dinner held in Nairobi on Wednesday.

Makueni county also beat Kisumu and Tharaka Nithi in the best-managed healthcare category.

The award recipients were recognised for their outstanding performance, contributions and achievement in improving the quality of healthcare in Kenya.

M.P. Shah won the Private Hospital of Choice award while Twenek Mission Hospital took the Faith-Based/Mission Hospital of Choice award.

Twenek beat CURE (AIC) International Hospital and Kijabe AIC Hospital while M.P. Shah beat Outspan and Orion Healthcare Medical Centre.

“In Makueni county, we engaged the youth whose creativity and innovation were outstanding to help us accelerate the achievement of UHC through innovations. Today, we have a system that helps ordinary people in our county,” Governor Kivutha Kibwana said.

His county and other health players are also planning a UHC programme at the county level to deliver quality healthcare.

Health CS Sicily Kariuki said: “These awards come at a critical time when we are planning the scale-up of UHC programmes across the country with the aim of providing quality healthcare services that will enable us transit to a more productive and equitable economy.”

The programme will address affordability, accessibility and quality.

The Lifetime Achievement award was taken by Prof Khama Rogo who beat Professors George Magoha (Education CS)  and Miriam Were. Dr Kevin Rombosia took the health leadership award.

Other winners were Tunza Social Franchise for their excellence in improving access to primary care services.

Jacaranda Health won Excellence in Advancing Maternal and Child Health award.  The Health and Wellbeing award went to Population Service Kenya (Trust condoms) which also won the Best Use of Social Media in Healthcare (Kukachora) award.

Student Innovation Project of the Year award went to Juma Theophillus.

The awards are the brainchild of Zawadi Brand Solutions Limited in partnership with Amref Health Africa.

The initiative takes a health system strengthening approach to improve standards of health service delivery among health professionals. It recognises outstanding performance, fostering innovation and the use of information technology and sharing of best practice.

“The UHC momentum gives us a golden opportunity to make quality of healthcare the DNA of our health system, by replicating and scaling up key lessons on quality, so that no Kenyan will join the five million people dying annually due to poor quality care,” Amref country director Meshack Ndirangu said.

The initiative also unites the public and private sectors towards a common goal and creates a platform for collaboration.