A million Cuban doctors won’t save us
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe addresses some of the 20 Cuban doctors stationed at the Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital during the launch of the hospital’s Infectious Disease Unit (IDU) and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on August 5.
What you need to know:
- Kenyan doctors and nurses remaining unemployed, it is difficult to know how the country could achieve a lower doctor-to-patient ratio.
- As Sh5 billion Ugatuzi Tower is planned, many counties are yet to honour their commitment to our medical professionals.
Kaltum Guyo: A million Cuban doctors won’t save us
Yes, that is a fact. We are not failing in provision of universal basic healthcare (UHC) for lack of doctors, but for failure to institute a culture of care and responsibility within the sector. In a society where service delivery is pegged on one’s political leanings, it would be hard to achieve any meaningful standard of care in our hospitals.
Idiosyncratic governors such as Busia’s Sospeter Ojaamong, summed up our leaders’ priorities well when he gaffed recently, that our medical professionals should “wait until this BBI thing is over” for doctors to benefit from the proposals in the initiative. Why wait for BBI to save us from coronavirus? Secondly, why politicise healthcare? More importantly, why politicise it during a pandemic?
As our physicians keep dying from Covid-19 (the latest being Dr Stephen Mogusu), and die still demanding payment of their delayed salaries, our government chooses the moment to improve Cuban doctors’ welfare.
It continues to pamper them with cushy homes and chauffeured cars. It is interesting to note that no Cuban doctor has come out to complain of delayed salaries. They clearly must be minting money at the expense of local doctors.
Sh5 billion Ugatuzi Tower
As we open the doors to Cuban doctors, many of our own physicians who recently graduated are walking about jobless. According to the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), nearly 1,000 (yes that is one thousand!) Kenyan doctors were unemployed by March of this year as the government takes in more Cubans. There is no justification for such a move. If there is any, it would be kind to at least inform our doctors. Most importantly a little transparency on the deal will help.
President Kenyatta has been at the forefront of establishing UHC and made it one of his pillars in the Big 4 Agenda. The realisation of such a scheme requires lowering of doctor-to-patient ratio. With many Kenyan doctors and nurses remaining unemployed, it is difficult to know how the country could achieve a lower doctor-to-patient ratio.
What is even more heart-breaking is that doctors already employed fail to get their salaries and remunerations as governors prioritise other silly projects over healthcare.
What purpose is a new headquarters for council of governors meant to achieve? The timing of the project is a kick in the teeth to many families who lost their loved ones to poor management of Covid-19 and other diseases in the county hospitals.
Lest unaware, our governors need know offices are becoming obsolete as technology has made it easier for us to be able to work from homes and tents without being stuffed into expensive buildings set up for kickbacks. As Sh5 billion Ugatuzi Tower is planned, many counties are yet to honour their commitment to our medical professionals.
Would it not be better to make sure that medical officials were catered for first and more so in this pandemic before planning on another white elephant? What is going to happen to all the governors’ headquarters being built in the counties then?
Improvement of internet connection in the counties would be cheaper and effective way to connect governors virtually. I smell corruption. Talking of corruption, it is about time the Ministry of Health started giving daily commentaries on graft in the sector and what is being done about it.
The silence around the money lost at Kemsa and MES project is not reassuring. The Covid-19 press conferences should be used to update the country on how anti-corruption progress in the sector is going. Perhaps one approach to fighting corruption?
Wastage of resources
Wastage of resources is something the government has perfected. We have deputy governors earning salaries just to watch paint dry as they have been pushed to the periphery by the governors.
More than Sh2 billion is wasted on their salaries by counties that claim to have no money for medical professionals. Waiting for counties to be the force for change in the face of impunity and corruption in the counties is too naïve.
I proposed before that healthcare needs to be a national program with a healthcare commission as its watchdog. My view has not changed. It is time perhaps we reviewed the place of healthcare within the devolved units.
It is even more justifiable to nationalise healthcare to stop politicians using it as a bait for votes. The slower we attempt to depoliticise healthcare, the more lives we shall lose to our insensitive politics and politicians. It is the lives of the poor that will most likely be put at risk.
Kenya needs to match its economic aspirations with its social obligations to its citizens. It cannot progress economically without basic needs such as housing, clean water and quality healthcare improving in tandem with economic growth.
We really should not be at a point, nearly 60 years after independence, to have its doctors begging to be fed, let alone to be kept alive. We have enough human capital to support the healthcare system. We just need to employ them and pay them well. Looking to Cuban doctors is a false economy.
[email protected]. @kdiguyo
