Kenyatta National Hospital has been allocated Sh8.4 billion while the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital has been allocated Sh5.2 billion; bringing their total allocation to Sh13.6 billion of the Ministry’s total budgetary allocation of Sh45 billion/FILE
Kenyatta National Hospital has been allocated Sh8.4 billion while the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital has been allocated Sh5.2 billion; bringing their total allocation to Sh13.6 billion of the Ministry’s total budgetary allocation of Sh45 billion.
An additional Sh300 million, Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich said, would go toward, “informal settlement healthcare programmes.”
“Even if you have hospitals around the slums those people do not have transport to go to those hospitals so we have to put facilities within the slums themselves. We are building some facilities on Lunga Lunga Road, Eastlands, so we shall start in that place and then we go to other slums in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu,” Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia explained to Capital FM News in an earlier interview.
Rotich said the Executive was also planning to spend Sh3 billion to better equip hospitals nationwide through lease financing.
Macharia had said the equipment was worth Sh34 billion but would cost an average of Sh3.4 billion annually.
“We’ve got 94 hospitals which we’re looking at, two per county and as up to 7,000 Kenyans are going to India, South Africa for treatment at a cost of Sh10 billion every year, we’re looking at 400 dialysis machines from the current 44,350; ICU beds from 66 in the entire country then for cancer only Kenyatta and Moi provide proper treatment so we want to expand that to the 11 previously called provincial general hospitals,” Macharia explained.
Nairobi County has also committed Sh385 million to the rehabilitation of Pumwani, Sh150 million to improve Mama Lucy and another Sh150 million to upgrade Mbagathi among others.
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Then in line with its manifesto, Rotich on Thursday said Sh4 billion would go toward the provision of universal maternal health care; an increase of Sh1 billion from the inaugural Sh3 billion in the 2013/14 financial year.
“It’s mainly to reimburse hospitals and we use statistics received every quarter. If they are health centres we give them Sh2,500 per delivery, if they are district hospitals we give them Sh5,000, if it’s a referral hospital we give them Sh17,500. So there’s a scale,” Macharia had also explained.
A worthwhile investment, he added, given the decline in maternal and child mortality since its implementation on June 1, 2013.
“The percentage of mothers going to hospitals to deliver has gone up from 44 to 66 percent and as a result maternal mortality rate has come down by 8 percent and child mortality by 15 percent,” Macharia testified, o we would like to continue with the programme.”
The budget for free access to basic health care in health centres and dispensaries, Rotich said, would however remain constant at Sh700 million in the 2014/15 financial year.
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