The Ministry of Health will on Thursday hold a validation meeting of the draft policy that seeks to ensure the coordinated migration of healthcare workers.
The meeting which will be attended by heads of directorates, divisions and departments comes at a time when the country has experienced emigration of health workers in search of better terms and pay.
The acting Health Director General Patrick Amoth in a memo dated February 7, acknowledged that failure to coordinate the migration is likely to weaken the health systems.
This saw the need for the formation of a task force to develop a workforce migration policy as a priority to guide the health sector on all matters of health workforce labour migration.
The draft policy was developed through consultative meetings with various stakeholders.
“Many countries continue to seek Kenyan health workers while on another hand, the country currently cannot offer employment opportunities to all our health worker cadres who graduate from our training institutions,” Amoth said.
“The migration if not well harnessed has the potential of destabilising or weakening our health systems through various ways, including antecedent brain drain and long-term economic loss on education investments that end up not serving the country’s needs,” he added.
The DG further raised concern it can lead to the possible exploitation of skilled health professionals by predatory recruitment agencies leading to uncoordinated and unfair labour engagements.
“There is a need to have systematic coordinated and harmonised health workforce migration process that will ensure the country’s mandate to provide health care is maintained.”
The ministry in June last year flagged off the first cohort of Kenyan nurses recruited to work in the United Kingdom as part of bilateral agreement between Kenya and the UK on the recruitment of the Health workforce.
The agreement between Kenya and the UK on the recruitment of Health workforce was signed by former President Uhuru Kenyatta and ex-UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson in January 2021.
