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Mwaruma said the Ministry of Health should establish more national teaching and referral hospitals and provide them with modern medical equipment.
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He said county governments need to allocate more funds to their respective health dockets.
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Taita Taveta Senator Johnes Mwaruma wants the government to establish national teaching and referral hospitals in the Coast, Eastern, North Eastern, Nyanza and Western regions.
In a Notice of Motion, Mwaruma said Kenyatta University Research and Teaching Hospital in Kiambu and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu, are the only such facilities outside Nairobi.
“Many Kenyans with critical health conditions travel long distances to access specialised services in Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret or Nairobi where the other national teaching and referral hospitals are located, leading to high cost of travel, augmented disease and in some cases deaths along the way,” he argued.
He added that the bed capacity, medical equipment, and human capital in these national teaching and referral hospitals are not sufficient to absorb all the patients seeking specialised treatment.
Mwaruma said the Ministry of Health should establish more national teaching and referral hospitals and provide them with modern medical equipment.
He said county governments need to allocate more funds to their respective health dockets to adequately cater to or facilitate their County Level 5 and Level 6 hospitals to reduce the demand for such services from the national teaching and referral hospitals.
Aside from Kenyatta and Moi, other national teaching and referral hospitals are National Spinal Injury Referral Hospital, Kenyatta National Hospital and Mathare National Teaching and Referral Hospital.
Teaching and referral hospitals provide complex curative tertiary care.
They also provide preventive care and participate in public health programmes for the local community and the total primary health care system.
They are centres of excellence and provide complex health care requiring more complex technology and highly skilled personnel.
They have a high concentration of resources and are relatively expensive to run.
They also support the training of health workers at both pre-service and in-service levels.