From: Judy Miriga

Good People,

I think Kenyans are worse off and are not doing any better since 50 years of independence, where we expected to have elevated success with big strides progressing in Health care, expanded jobs creation and improved innovation and technical sciences.

Today, professionalism, code of conduct and discipline with care facilities and utilities needed to offer good healthcare promptly and effectively on time, with good remuneration and incentives are presently missing because of corruption and impunity; as well as poor management from conflict of interest afflicted by the interferences of politically correct. These are situation to blame for Healthcare failures in Kenya. cases like Clinix and NHIF saga having been put on the shelve without their cases being concluded in the court of law, are crimes, violation and abuse against humanity; that if they shall remain without being addressed, situation will go from bad to worse, an it is pathetic.

These are some serious injustices Kenya must be forced to address by the people excerting pressure, as justice delayed, is justice denied.

No business will work well if it is not supervised by those who own it. Peoples’ Government must be a concern of the people why they should not remain stagnant and people themselves must demand to engage effectively and be committed to make Democratic principles work. Peoples vote is their strength and it is the determining weapon for security of public mandate and interest. Poor and bad public servant must be showed the door and rejected by the people and new people must be hired in exchange to instil discipline in public offices to deliver service responsibly with integrity………….The Government system will begin to work only when people shall decide enough is enough…………and moving forward will surely begin to bear good success story for the people demands….…….

So answer to Prof. Nyongo, is that, Kenyans have achieved serious deadly cancer of corruption and impunity in Health care sector since independence, and in the past 50 years, things are worse and situation is not healthy at all. There is need for serious re-thinking to capture the lost glory………………

Nyongo need to know that, Kenya and the world does not need GMO foods except they need to engage in a collective safer strategic plan that shall improve and make life better with secure and safer environment, not polluted nature……….a plan that would provide conducive atmsphere for sustained innovation that protects and improves life rather than destroy life and kill naturals of God creation for life which is in itself is life………….and this is how Kenya, Africa and the world is ready to engage in Emerging MarketPlace of challenges that are competitive and are providing good value for progressive development…………

There is no success engaging in GMO that the world has rejected and dumped when you want to talk about achievements…………….Where shall you compete with that kind of backward theories in challenges at the world market………….it is retrogresive thinking if not worse……….. This is a peace that Prof. Nyongo need to rethink while in public service…………

I believe this contribution will provide for heads-up moving forward and people like Prof. Anyang Nyongo must be told the same in clear perspectives so they are aware that people are serious and are concern about how their business must be run and how they wish to be governed.

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

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What have we achieved in the health sector since independence?

Updated Saturday, October 19th 2013 at 22:43 GMT +3
By Anyang’ Nyong’o
anyongo@yahoo.com

In general, are Kenyans living longer on this Earth than they did 50 years ago? The answer is probably not. Are we eating better, having access to fresh drinking water and living in cleaner environments than we did 50 years ago? The answer is that some are eating better, a good number drink water that is dangerous to their health and the problem of environmental degradation is a danger to health all around us, whether we are in Mandera, Mathare Valley in Nairobi or travelling on the highway to Mombasa as big lorries belch dark smoke from their exhaust pipes onto our faces.

In other words, the increase in the incidences of diabetes, heart disease, cancers of all types and other diseases since independence is no accident: it is the result of our systematic abuse of our environment over the last 50 years; our rising population with a decreasing ability to provide proper nutrition to this population across the board; and our inadequate awareness regarding the basic things we need to do to prevent diseases.

Yet when we were born as a new nation we were quite clear in our minds that we could only develop as a healthy and prosperous nation if we tackled problems of poverty, ignorance and diseases together and with the same intensity. Our 1965 “bible” for development, Sessional Paper No. 10 on “African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya” was quite clear on this: it envisaged a nation where the people and the government would work together for prosperity, each citizen bearing the responsibility for the development of the nation as well as the self.

This was the philosophy of “mutual social responsibility”.

In the area of education we did quite well. What of the airlift programme to the USA organised by Tom Mboya that availed higher education to many Kenyans who might have missed the boat altogether. What of a similar arrangement by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga for those who went to the then Eastern Bloc countries? Then came the Harambee schools and the government takeover of the same, making upward mobility possible for thousands of children born to poor peasant families.

Then the Narc government came with its free primary school education where even 75-year-olds went to school for the first time. Although as important — and even more important — than education, health has not received as much-hyped attention either by the government or by wananchi.

We are acutely aware of our health needs and challenges, but we seem to leave it to be the affair of the individual or the family until a friend or a relative gravely falls sick or dies, then the spirit of Harambee (or mutual social responsibility) is momentarily summoned, and we gather in droves to equally momentarily alleviate the burden or tragic consequences of ill health on one of us.

Granted that we have paid attention to the immunisation of children, improvements in maternal care, access to health care by the under fives and the creation of facilities for the same.

But the truth is: too many mothers are still dependent on traditional birth attendants who cannot always effectively handle the health problems of mothers and babies after delivery.

Health is a social issue not an individual issue. Sickness and disease are not individual problems: they are social problems. In the 1960s our nationalists were aware of this.

And that is why Kenya was the first country in Africa in 1963 to initiate a planned parenthood programme, led by the then minister for Planning, T.J. Mboya, to ensure a quality population.

Kenya was also the first country in Africa to establish a National Hospital Insurance Fund to ensure that access to treatment was guaranteed to those who were contributors to the subsidised health insurance scheme. Treatment in government health facilities was free then, making it possible for the poor to receive treatment when in need. With the growing population as well as rapid urbanisation, the burden of financing free health care became unbearable for the government.

With the advice and pressure from the Bretton-Woods institutions, a cost-sharing programme was started in 1989. Health sector reforms initiated in 1994, and expanded upon since then by successive administrations, have not dealt with the basic problem: universal access to affordable and quality health care for all.

Countries which have confronted this issue headlong, have used only one method: universal health insurance coverage, wholly funded by the government or financed by social health insurance package that marries direct government funding with contributors’ funds. Transforming the NHIF into a National Social Health Insurance Fund (or scheme), as was proposed by the Narc government, or Grand Coalition Government, is the only sane option.

What is holding Kenya back from fulfilling our constitutional obligation of providing affordable and quality health care for all are two things: vested interests in the insurance fraternity and among some Health Management Organisations and political myopia among those who are always ready to crucify a good message because they don’t like the face of the messenger. It is time to wake up and live by the dictum “a working and prosperous nation must also be a healthy nation”. Otherwise Vision 2030 will remain a pipe dream in our lives except the glittering and winding highways close to urban centres.

The writer is Kisumu County Senator