The Government of Kenya in its ‘Vision 2030’ has earmarked a few flagship projects between the years 2008-2012 which aim to provide autonomy of health institutions from the Ministry of health with a view to enhancing the management of the same. This would be a good move to make health services available to the countries, however, with strict regulations to avoid substandard healthcare facilities.
A lot of developing middle economies have enhanced healthcare provision as it has encouraged medical tourism from other countries and thus enhanced the nation’s revenue. There has been a marked increase in the number of people travelling to other countries for a cheaper treatment by combining it with a vacation.
For instance, Thailand is a country that receives the largest number of medical tourists at the rate of nearly 1.3 million people annually. Thailand, due to medical tourism, is able to gain $3.7 billion out of medical tourism alone. Likewise, other Asian countries such as Singapore, India and Malaysia also account for nearly 500,000 medical tourists each year.
Overall, the Kenyan Government has realised the futility of earmarking billions of dollars into infrastructural projects without focusing on the need for healthcare facilities. You need to have a healthy population to enjoy the facilities. The popular Thika Super Highway that has resulted in numerous fatalities and the survivors requiring specialised medical attention can illustrate this.
Hence, Kenya needs to focus on adopting international standards that other Asian countries have adopted such as the JCIASH. The Kenyatta National Hospital is working towards attaining the JCIASH standard to evolve as an excellent medical institutions and that is praiseworthy.
Many countries have their own national health accreditation bodies like the Healthcare Accreditation Institute in Thailand; however, there are not enough models around the globe for providing affordable and high quality healthcare. However, when looking at the Health Accreditation Institute in Thailand, we can benchmark its best healthcare practices, as the certification programme has a holistically approach which is focused inpatient-care and quality enhancement.
The local county governments in Kenya are also putting in their efforts for resource allocation but the dearth of skilled health workers and funds is something that slackens the efforts. To add to this, is the hasty decision of the new governments for appointing advisers on financial, economic and legal matters- giving health matters a step-motherly treatment. The investment of Sh40 billion in the health sector for the coming financial year does sound promising though.
