Road signs warning of a black spot at the Kibunja-Salgaa stretch on the Nakuru-Eldoret highway.
At the fast growing Salgaa Town, along the Nakuru-Eldoret Highway, a stoic building is coming up across the road opposite the Shell Petrol Station.
Once completed—by the end of November this year, it will not only change the landscape of one of the country’s road accident hotspots but more importantly, provide a perfect response to what Martin Luther King once termed as shocking and inhumane happenstance.
For in his wisdom, the late American civil rights crusader opined: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane.”
Even though the drafters of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya sought to correct the countrywide injustice in health by devolving the function, nothing demonstrates more, the gaping wrong-doing to hundreds of road accident victims along the Nakuru-Sobea-Salgaa-Sachangwan stretch of the Nakuru-Eldoret Highway.
While successive governments at the national level have attempted to right this wrong, the need for a health facility that can handle the outcome of road carnage at the hotspot has increasingly assumed more urgent dimensions.
This is part of the reason that we in Nakuru County chose to invest Sh250 million in a Level 4 Hospital at Salgaa, to not only serve the residents of Visoi and Mosop wards and the larger Rongai Sub-County but also provide health justice to victims of road accidents along this stretch.
The images of 130 people who perished in the 2009 Sachangwan fuel tanker tragedy remain etched in the minds of many Kenyans, who feel that a Level 4 Hospital- a few metres from the tragedy scene, could have lowered the toll.
The 90 bed-capacity hospital will, in net effect, increase good outcomes for road traffic victims. Through this hospital, we seek to provide a county-led solution to a national problem, that has been in the plans of successive governments for decades.
Whereas the line of thought along the provision of a top hospital at a hotspot area suffices, we are driven more by the mission to fulfil the pledge I made to the voters—bringing quality, affordable and timely healthcare services closer. It is our intention to ensure that each sub-county in Nakuru has a fully equipped and modern health facility.
The construction of a Level 4 hospital in Kuresoi North is under way. These are out-patient and in-patient hospital blocks in Molo, Njoro and Subukia. New level 4 hospitals are under construction in Rongai and Kuresoi North sub-counties.
Other hospitals that have benefited from maternity blocks are Bahati, Elburgon and Gilgil sub-county hospitals. In total, there are 15 Level 4 hospitals in the county with Nakuru Level 5 Hospital being a referral and teaching hospital.
We commit 40 per cent of our annual budget to health services and the outcome, both in quality services and infrastructure development, are evident.
For instance, in 2022, our facilities attended to 5,622,801 outpatient visits. In 2023, our outpatient visits rose to 5,966,380, an increase of 365,579 or 6.5 per cent. These numbers demonstrate the growing trust and reliance our community places in our healthcare services.
The writer is the Governor, Nakuru County
