Health CS Susan Nakhumicha has fired a warning shot at healthcare workers who fail to deliver on their mandate.
Speaking in Kericho during the ongoing Pre-Mashujaa Day exhibition and conference, the CS said every healthcare worker will be required to up their game in delivering the best services to patients.
Nakhumicha pointed out the practice where healthcare workers appear at their workstations only to hang their dust coats and disappear leaving patients in the queues with no one to attend to them.
She said she had deliberately invited the CS in charge of performance Moses Kuria to grace the event so as to lay bare the truth on the expectations in terms of delivery of services by the healthcare workers.
“You cannot be the doctor who comes and hangs your dustcoat and when patients are coming to queue, you are nowhere to be seen and at the end of the day you expect a reward, it doesn’t happen, it will not happen as we move forward. We want everybody to meet their end of the bargain,” Nakhumicha said.
She added: “You cannot be the kind of nurse where it is circulating on social media that you do not have a human face yet you are taking care of a patient and expect that we will look at you and applaud you for that, everybody must pull their weight.”
She however reiterated the commitment of the national government to work with the counties to iron out any issues affecting the health sector.
She noted that even though health is a devolved function and most of the healthcare workers are employed by the counties, there is a need to work together for the common goal of all Kenyans.
“As the national government we cannot close our eyes, neither can we close our ears to their pleas because there is no Kenyan who is a patient of the county and the national government," she said.
All patients are Kenyans and therefore we have to work together to see how is it that we resolve these issues.”
This year's Mashujaa Day celebration is themed around Universal Health Care, a crucial pillar aligned with the Kenya Kwanza government's commitment to achieving Vision 2030 targets.
