City Hall is set to spend at least Sh400 million to upgrade community health centres across the county in a bid to boost access to health services at ward level.
This in addition to strengthening partnership with private health centres by enhancing engagement between the two parties.
SERVICE DELIVERY
The upgrade will see the centres acquire more medical equipment to improve their efficiency in service delivery as well as uplifting their capacity to handle more patients.
Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko said that apart from ongoing upgrading of Nairobi County’s top four facilities including Mama Lucy Kibaki, Pumwani, Mbagathi and Mutuini Hospitals, his administration will also channel resources to community health centers across the 17 sub-Counties.
Besides the sub-County health centres, the City Hall boss, stated that the county government has taken stock of other health facilities that have been supplementing provision of health services to residents in informal settlements.
“We have private facilities within these places and because we have no adequate land to put up county hospitals, we must find a way of how we have work together to ensure residents have access to reliable and quality medical care,” said Sonko.
In the current financial year, the health sector was allocated Sh7.4 billion, forming the bulk of the more than Sh35 billion budget.
Governor Sonko further pointed out that the county is looking into various options to ensure that at least each of the top health centres in the 17 sub-Counties have ambulances, enough medical personnel as well as incorporating Community Health Volunteers into the sector.
AMBULANCES
In light of this, plans are underway to purchase at least 30 ambulances which will be distributed among the health centres with private health facilities and other community-based health centers operating in proximity set to benefit from such services once the partnership is sealed.
Over the past months, county hospitals have recorded an influx of patients, an improvement that the governor attributed to heavy investment in equipping county hospitals geared toward enhancing healthcare services provision.
“More patients are now seeking services from Nairobi County health facilities due to the intensified upgrade and equipping of the hospitals,” said Sonko.
Figures released by the county’s Health Sector revealed that the number of deliveries in Pumwani Maternity Hospital had nearly doubled from 11, 169 to 19, 267 annually. The facility was the first to be upgraded under Sonko’s administration.
At Mbagathi Hospital, the number of patients recorded in the outpatient department had risen from 98, 471 in June 2017 to 113, 916 at the time while at Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital, the number of patients had increased to 314, 000 from 214, 150 in 2017.
A similar increase in the number of patients seeking services at the county health facilities was also recorded in Level 2 and 3 facilities including Kayole I, Kayole II, Lunga Lunga, Eastleigh and Westlands Health Centres, among others.
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