During the first cabinet meeting of the year 2014 held on Thursday, the cabinet approved a plan to lease equipment for public hospitals and improve infrastructure under a PPP arrangement. Photo/FILE.
The Acting Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat Director General, Prof Wainaina Gituro, has singled out the Cabinet approval of a plan to lease equipment for public hospitals on a public-private Partnership model as a progressive move with a positive bearing on Vision 2030 delivery.
Further, the Cabinet approval for a number of legislative bills including the Magistrates Courts Bill – 2014 and the Amendments to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Authority (AFFA) Act – 2013, Prof Wainaina noted will provide much needed legislative authority for key projects falling under the Vision 2030 Social, Economic, Political and the auxiliary Enablers and Macro Pillar.
“The Vision Delivery Secretariat is encouraged by the recent positive steps that have been taken by the Cabinet to address some of the Vision delivery challenges,” Prof Wainaina explained.
In addition, he added: “The approval by Cabinet to lease medical equipment and facilitate infrastructure development through a PPP model provides a major relief for the Vision 2030 health improvement goals.”
During the first cabinet meeting of the year 2014 held on Thursday, the cabinet approved a plan to lease equipment for public hospitals and improve infrastructure under a PPP arrangement.
The plan is, geared at fast-tracking the Government’s intention of attaining the highest possible health standards for the citizens.
Under the Project, the private sector will be involved in equipping and maintenance of hospital equipment. The plan will involve the Government paying for the services rendered while the equipment is, owned by a private entity.
The private entity shall guarantee maintenance/service of the equipment, and replacements with no interruption of service delivery as long as the contract is in force, thus greatly saving on the total costs.
The project will focus on providing critical care services where currently there is a huge gap as the Country has only 64 Public ICU Beds (10%) against a requirement of 670 beds (90%) in Public Hospitals.
Other need areas to benefit are Renal Care Services where currently only 820 patients are admitted against a demand of over 8000 new patients annually. Renal care facilities are, only found in five major Public Hospitals in the Country.
Currently, there is an existing gap of 80% as only 44 dialysis units are available against a demand of 200 units.
At the same time, the Cabinet meeting also discussed proposed amendments to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Authority Act 2013. The amendments are, aimed at aligning the Act with the on-going reform Programme for the Agricultural Sector.
Geared at transforming Kenya into a middle income, globally competitive and industrialising country with a high quality of life in the next 17 years, Vision 2030, is, anchored on three pillars.
Within the last five years, the Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat has successfully managed to co-ordinate the rollout of key flagship projects covering the economic, social and political pillars including the ground-breaking of the Standard gauge railway, Kenya Constitution 2010 and a raft of education and agricultural sector policy reforms geared at fostering national development.
Other major flagship projects recently rolled out include; establishment of the Lamu Port Southern-Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor Development Authority to manage the implementation of the LAPSSET project on behalf of the government of Kenya.
To ensure the timely implementation of all flagship projects, the VDS has also managed to embed Vision 2030 projects into the Government performance contracting platform through the inclusion of performance indicators. This inclusion is, geared at ensuring that all state institutions focus on the national development agenda Vision 2030.
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