KENYA – In the quest to improve public health status in the country, the government of Kenya has announced plans to spend KSh2.7 billion (US$20.21m) in scaling up community health volunteers (CHVs’).
Council of Governors (COG) Health Committee Chairman and Tharaka Nithi Governor, Muthomi Njuki said that the government’s plan is to increase the number of health volunteers in the country from the current 88,000 to 100,000 total.
“The national government is going to spend KSh2.7 billion (US$20.21m) in the next three years to ensure that up-scaling is taking place, the county governments are already taking care of the 88,000 community healthcare workers, we just want the program to be enhanced and that is the best place to be,” said Njuki.
Njuki said this at the ongoing first Public Health International Conference in Mombasa. He added that counties that have taken the burden are struggling due to limited resources that are channelled to the county governments as revenue share.
“The last time we sat in the intergovernmental summit between the two levels we resolved that we are going to enforce the community health volunteers program by up-scaling them from the current 88,000 to 100,000 total in the country,” Njuki confirmed.
He said the sector has been ignored for a long time since it deals with preventive measures, stating that the conference seeks to improve and bring the communicable disease burden down in the country.
“If you look at the funding structure of the county government, counties still spend 30 percent of the budget they get on health, that barely scratches what it needs, what we are seeing on the other hand is a lot of resources that would be useful to the counties are stuck in Afya house,” said Njuki.
Governor Njuki said most counties have only allocated below 30 percent of their budgets on health matters, stating that there is a need to ensure a paradigm shift by ensuring that counties invest heavily in preventive health rather than curative.
The Chairman of the conference, Mr. Mohammed Karama said that the forum was a good medium to bring the members up to speed on the current issues of public health while reconnecting all members from the country.
He affirmed that there are plans to launch a Training Needs Assessment which is aimed at transforming the training system in the country to improve the performance of public health workers in order to address the government’s policy.
“Health has become very complex and therefore we need to restructure and retrain, build the capacity of our workers, train them with more special skills to be able to go much more into details of their areas of operation,” Karama said.
Chief Executive Officer of Public Health Officers and Technicians Council, Mr. Aggrey Oriema said that the conference is an ongoing discussion to identify the gaps in service delivery, ensure coordination between national and the county governments is enhanced adding it will further bring development partners on board and ensure a critical mass that will support public health service delivery in the country.
He said that they are also looking to strengthen their regulatory framework to ensure a competent workforce.
The forum which brought together public health officers from both the county and central government sought among others to have the public health act reviewed to align it with the current constitution.
Participants also sought to spell out a proper funding plan of the devolved units in managing public health affairs within the counties. It also sought to address the welfare of community health volunteers to have a meaningful remuneration as a motivation.
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