Senators flag staff shortage, poor services at Nakuru county referral hospital

The Senate Committee on Health came face-to-face with the agony and struggles patients face when seeking treatment at Nakuru County Referral Hospital. 

The committee, chaired by Uasin Gishu Senator Jackson Mandago, toured the hospital, where they questioned service delivery.

The facility that once served the Rift Valley Province is now reeling from an acute shortage of doctors, poor maternity service, broken down toilets and lack of pharmaceutical services.

Mandago was accompanied by Kisii Senator Richard Onyonka and Vincent Chemitei Baringo.

He said that they encountered long queues of patients firsthand.

On Tuesday, the two doctors who were supposed to attend to the patients were not in the facility, with only four clinicians available.

.

Keep Reading

• SHA to offer rehabilitation services for teachers suffering from addiction
• Hospital gives preterm babies a second chance

Two doctors are supposed to attend to the huge number of patients that visit the hospital, which the committee said was not sustainable.

“There is a need for an increase in human resources; more than 60 per cent of county budgets are on salaries focused on medical personnel,” the committee chair said.

Mandago noted that Nakuru gets Sh83 million, of which Sh23 million is collected and receives Sh60 million in reimbursement from the Social Health Authority.

The committee advised the county to employ more medics to boost service delivery.

He recommended that the facility should improve the management of pharmaceutical records, which are done manually.

Some of the services, such as the oncology facility, Mandago said, are working, with equipment acquired through the government's national equipment programme.

For the maternity, the senator said that over 1,000 deliveries are conducted monthly, with a mortality rate below that of the national statistics.

“There is a need for continued research on how to curb the mortality rate to reduce cases of post-haemorrhage,” he said

Mandago urged the county to prioritise clearing Sh78 million KEMSA debt to ensure stability.

He called on the unions to allow the two levels of government to reduce the medics shortage, either by recruiting health workers as interns or on contract with a proper framework that will transition them to permanent and pensionable.

Senator Onyonka advised the county to embrace solarisation to reduce the cost of electricity which amounts to Sh90 million annually for Nakuru County Referral Hospital.

Onyonka called on the hospital management to get rid of asbestos roofing, which causes cancer.

“Some of the buildings here are cracked, have toilets which are not functional, some of these don’t need a lot of money,” he said.

Senator Chemitei refuted the claims of bedsharing in the facility, insisting that the hospital receives a maximum of 30 patients a day, with 48-bed capacity.