A delegation from Machakos county government
on Thursday visited Kirinyaga county on a benchmarking tour of healthcare
service delivery.
The visit by a team of senior officers
from the Machakos department of Health and Medical Services came a week after
Governor Wavinya Ndeti, alongside other governors, toured Kerugoya Medical
Complex during the G7 Kirinyaga Chapter Activation.
Wavinya said she was committed to
leveraging the successful healthcare model in Kirinyaga county to improve
health systems in her county for the benefit of the residents.
“I will also build a public
hospital that has the same standards as some of our biggest private hospitals.
I’m going to send a team here to learn one or two things from Kirinyaga,” she
said.
Led by the acting Health CEC, Justus
Kasivo, the team visited various departments at the state-of-the-art Kerugoya
Medical Complex that was opened last year and which has a bed capacity of 341.
The facility has an ICU with 12 beds
and a HDU with a similar bed capacity and offers services that include
specialist consultancy in pediatrics, Ear Nose and Throat (ENT), oncology,
dermatology, orthopedics, medical outpatient clinic, surgical outpatient,
neuro-pediatric clinic, obstetrics and gynecology.
“Our visit comes as a result of
the impression that our governor got when she visited the county last week.
“We are here to learn and pick some of
the best practices that we can replicate in our county in order to improve on
the services we are offering to our people,” the CEC said.
The team was also interested in
Kirinyaga’s digitised healthcare management system that has helped streamline
operations and improved patient care efficiency.
Machakos Infrastructure CEC, Rashid
Kara, noted that Kirinyaga has significantly improved on its healthcare service
delivery and infrastructure, making it an ideal destination for benchmarking.
Kirinyaga is among the counties
leading in efforts towards the achievement of Universal Health Care and has
embraced innovative approaches such as the Hospital Management Integrated
System that ensures accountability, monitoring and evaluation of the healthcare
system.
Kirinyaga chief officer of Medical
Services, Dr Mureithi Nyaga, said the devolved unit was pleased to host the
delegation from Machakos and share insights that can help them improve their
healthcare systems.
“Since the official opening of
the Kerugoya Hospital Complex, we have seen a huge increase in the patients we
see daily. We record up to 600 patients in the outpatient department,” Dr
Mureithi said.
Delegations from various counties have been visiting the facility with the aim of borrowing some of the best practices to implement in their counties.