KISUMU, Kenya, April 4 – The Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Health Mary Muthoni has urged the striking doctors to accept the government’s offer before the Sh. 2.4 billion advanced to them is returned back to the treasury.
Muthoni says the government is committed to ending the strike that has paralyzed medical services in a number of public health facilities.
She says the funds advanced for posting of interns will have to be returned to treasury by June if the doctors fail to heed the government.
“The government has gone ahead to release the money, which if it gets to June it will go back to the treasury, so who loses,” she said.
Muthoni says there is a need for a roundtable meeting between the government and the Union to address the sticking issues amicably.
Speaking in Kisumu on Thursday during a summit on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) implementation, Muthoni says it is not possible for the government to address all the issues raised by the doctors dating back to 2017.
“We need to sit down and deliberate, at least the government has a good will to sort out all the issues but it can’t be done at once,” she said.
She further announced that the government has recruited 107,000 Community Health Promoters (CHPs) across the country to push preventive and promotive healthcare.
The PS says the promoters have been well armed with the relevant equipment to test ailments.
“This is in line with the Bottom up Transformation Agenda of the Kenya Kwanza government,” he said.
Muthoni announced that so far the promoters have screened 2.26 million individuals for diabetes, 1.56 million for hypertension and referred 41,000 individuals to the health facilities for diabetes and 96, 000 for hypertension.
She says the role of the CHPs is to reduce the disease burden in the households and ensure queues are reduced in the hospitals.
“We are already paying our CHPs on a 50 to 50 basis by the county government,” she said.
