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- Safinews.co.ke, highlights some of fruitful gains achieved when professional nurses’ body was vibrant
- During the tenure of former President Alfred Obengo, there came to birth training of health care workers and much hyped PPEs
- Get the story in-depth, grab your copy to get insights on what would have been projected in the next couple of his leadership
Former President of the National Nurses Association of Kenya (NNAK) Alfred Obengo has penned down his cordial relationship with the Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe during the Covid-19 Pandemic
In a long autobiography at the helm of the leadership position, Obengo opened how he provided technical and expertise support to the ministry that saw drastic reforms in the entire health workforce
Taking into consideration that health professionals were at adverse risk of contracting Covid-19 disease, the association body needed someone bold and astute in delivering result oriented outcomes to address all nurses across the country
Speaking exclusively with safinews.co.ke on Tuesday, 2nd August, Obengo authoritatively says, if it weren’t him, the personal protective equipments and providing psychosocial support for all frontline health workers couldn’t be attained
“It was during that period that I was appointed to the Technical Working Group that provided technical advice to the COVID-19 Fund Board. The Board had been appointed by the President to mobilize resources from the private sector to compliment the government in the fight against the pandemic.
Within that technical working group, we identified three critical areas that needed our urgent attention among them provision of PPE to health workers, training of healthcare workers in case management and offering psychosocial support,” Obengo recounts
However, he says, having done all that, the implementation of the activities depended mainly on the goodwill and support from the Ministry of Health through the Cabinet.
“It’s this time, CS, Mutahi Kagwe, requested me to join him in dis-
semination of the COVID-19 updates. I personally advised him that the Director
of Nursing Services and the CEO of Nursing Council Kenya were better placed to handle such technical issues.
In the COVID-19 technical working group which was appointed after wrote the letter to the CS, we managed to mobilize resources to purchase PPE’s to a tune of half a billion. We also managed to train about 30,000 health workers across the country on COVID-19 case Management,” He opens up.
He explains how psychosocial call centre established at the Nurses’ Complex at Kenyatta National Hospital helped all healthcare workers in need of psy-chosocial support.
Mr Obengo, one of the missed nurses’ official who was very outspoken during his tenure, advised the government to build the infrastructure – both physical and human resource, from lowest
level of health facilities and refine all referral services.
“A Kenyan must not go to a level five or six hospital because of a simple cough that can be treated in a dispensary. Make public health facilities work efficiently and respond to Wanjiku and these will go a long way to automatically lower the cost of healthcare in the
private sector.
There is no other meaningful duty we have than to make quality and affordable healthcare accessible and available to Wanjiku,” Could tell CS
He also aplauded ministry to optimise the human capital in terms of health asset to make sure nurses and technical staff have been recruited not only at national hospitals but also in dispensaries
To address the thorny in the flesh, Obengo called upon the ministry to embark on prudent utilization of resources and specifically deal with corruption especially in procurement processes so that money can be saved to add more value and support mwananchi.
“One of key areas put an emphasis on was to fully implement the NHIF ACT with special emphasis on capturing the in-formal sector whose potential still remains untapped,” Added