Mandera Governor forms team to review health sector

A taskforce has been formed to help reform the Mandera health sector.

Mandera Governor Mohamed Adan Khalif formed the team on Friday.

The taskforce will help the county leadership “understand the progress, challenges, changes to be made and shortcomings in the health care department.”

“We have been operating for long after we started with a single medical officer when our referral facility was a district hospital but we have moved up to 58 doctors and we need to know if the services have improved,” Mr Khalif said.

According to the county boss, the taskforce will focus on the software part of the county’s health sector and recommend on how health services could be improved.

“We are not attracting the middle class population into these facilities,” he said.

He said the team will help him identify the gaps in the department and recommend ways of improving service provision at the periphery facilities, reducing pressure on Mandera County Referral Hospital.
 
“We are looking for ways on how we can have our health facilities in the rural areas operate efficiently and reduce pressure on the main health facility. We want to have a very vibrant primary healthcare under the UHC and this taskforce will be finding how we can do this better,” Mr Khalif said.

Prof Khama Rogo will chair the taskforce and will be deputised by Dr Khadija Abdalla.

Prof Rogo is an obstetrician-gynecologist who later earned his PhD in Gynecologic Oncology from Sweden.

Prof Rogo served as the Lead Health Sector Specialist and Head of the Health in Africa Initiative, a $1B program on the private sector in health in Africa by the World Bank Group. Prior to that, he was Senior Advisor for Population and Reproductive Health at The World Bank. 

Prof Rogo has been a strong voice in all issues of health and human reproduction for three decades. He was the founder of the Nairobi Oncology Centre, the only specialist cancer care and advisory clinic in East Africa.

He has held positions as the President of the Kenya Medical Association (4 years), The Kenya Cancer Society (8 years), and Chairman of Kenya’s National Council for Population and Development.

Other members include Dr Dabar Abdi Maalim, Mr Hassan Eymoy, Mr Stephen Muchiri Ngariu and Dr Walter Obita.

Mr Eymoy served as the first Mandera Health Executive but resigned in 2015 in a cabinet reshuffle by Governor Ali Roba.

Others are Mr John Kabuchi, Dr Janette Karimi and Dr Bashir Issak.

The taskforce secretariat is headed by Mr Hassan Ali Ibrahim and Dr Ismail Sheikh Abdikadir.

The taskforce shall engage members of the public, health staff and other stakeholders to review citizens’ access to quality health services and map all healthcare providers across the county by levels of care.

It shall also review the demand for health services and make systemic recommendations to meet the demand, assess the status of all public health facilities to offer services of their respective levels of care including governance, infrastructure, human resource, equipment, medical supplies, health information systems and financing.

The Prof Rogo led team will review referral mechanisms for health services and also review the Supply Chain Management including last mile distribution of Health Products and Technologies

“This taskforce will help us in reviewing the status of Medical Equipment, use, repair and maintenance and it assess the status of Health Information Management and propose interventions towards a comprehensive Health Information Management System for public and private sector actors,” the governor said.

Health legislation, policies and strategies on health governance will be assessed and reforms proposed.

In the next 40 days, the taskforce is expected to complete reviewing human resource capacity and assess the gaps in number of staff, skills mix and management.

“We are interested in knowing the health care workers’ morale and their patient-centred attitudes,” Governor Khalif said.

The taskforce will review and propose an efficient health financing model to finance all health functions in Mandera to help in mapping the existing and potential partnership opportunities, both technical and financial in the health sector.

The Mandera County department of health enjoys the lion’s share of the annual budget of Sh2 billion from the county’s Sh11 billion budget.

“It is a good idea for this taskforce because the loopholes in the management of the health department can be identified and dealt with. All the supplies at the main hospitals end up in the private facilities and this taskforce has to recommend stringent measures against this,” Mr Adan Ali, a resident of Mandera, said.