•The programme entails leasing medical gadgets to select national and county government hospitals for seven years, ending this year.
•The programme entails leasing assorted medical gadgets to select national and county government hospitals for seven years ending this year
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Thirteen out of 121 hospitals that benefited from the Managed Equipment Service project are yet to utilize some of the equipment, more than six years since its inception.
An analysis by the Association of Medical Engineers of Kenya shows some of the facilities are still lying idle in the 13 facilities for various reasons and want the Council of Governors to intervene and ensure residents benefit from the intended services.
The reasons include lack of clean water, personnel, three-phase power and incomplete buildings to house the equipment.
For instance, the building at the Garsen sub-county hospital is not ready while the fixed digital X-ray machines at the Kehancha sub-county hospital, Keroka sub-county hospital and Tharaka sub-county hospital are yet to be utilised due to lack of a phase three power.
The hospitals are, however, using portable x-ray machines that can operate using single-phase power.
Kamwosor sub-county hospital lacks clean water in the theatre while other facilities such as Baragoi sub-county hospital, Kacheliba sub-county hospital, Bura sub county hospital and Eldas sub-county hospital lack the required personnel to operate the equipment.
“The CoG should reach out to the 13 hospitals which are not utilising the equipment and support where there is a need for support because why would a county not use equipment for six years so to speak and other counties are benefitting and asking for more,” Amek secretary general Millicent Aloo said.
“The biomedical engineers are the ones taking care of the equipment from the inception, installation, training, preventive maintenance, the calibration decommissioning so we have a upper hand to know whether the equipment is supporting the country or not,” Aloo added.
Under the MES project arrangement, this arrangement ensures public hospitals access modern health infrastructure, equipment or services over an agreed period, with the government making regular, pre-arranged payments based on agreed performance parameters.
The programme entails leasing medical gadgets to select national and county government hospitals for seven years, ending this year.
The renal, laboratory, ICU radiology and theatre equipment were leased to at least two level 4 hospitals in each of the 47 counties.
Through the programme, more than 3.8 million patients have benefited from X-ray exposures, 1.7 million from ultrasound scans and 628,821 patients from theatre operations.
“These equipment are technologically advanced and at the same time expensive so if you abandon this project at this particular point where are you going to take these machines because they are new machines some have not worked some have been working,” Peter Ayieko said.
Speaking at an event in Kibera early this month, Health CAS Dr Rashid Aman acknowledged that availability of quality water in health facilities is a challenge that still exists and needs focus as the country gears towards UHC.
Using good quality water in hospitals for care of equipment is very critical. We know that in many of our facilities we don’t have water of quality that is required in health facilities.
Rashid noted that the MES project faced the challenges at the onset due to availability of clean water to set up the dialysis units in some of the select health facilities.
“For quite a while we faced difficulties in setting up particularly the renal dialysis units in some of these facilities simply because they didn’t have quality water that these units require,” Aman said.
He added: “I think we have moved on to fix the problem but that is only a few of the institutions. We are going to make sure that as we build up towards UHC, as we strengthen our health systems quality water availability is one of the areas we are focused on.”
In February, governors set tough conditions for the extension of the seven year Sh63 billion MES project as the contract supposed to end on various dates between December 2022 and May 2023.
The COG proposed the MES contractors deliver on all their obligations under each contract and address the negatives observed in the implementation of the contracts attributed to them.
The CoG and MoH shall review and consider modalities to compensate counties whose equipment were not delivered but fully paid for.