#MPESAGLOBAL
UNIVERSAL HEATH CARE
Corporate Governance
Key In Achieving Health
Goals
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By Gordon Odundo
Kenya’s ability to remain productive,
make huge economic gains and
provide its citizens reasonable
standards of living is dependent on how
it governs the health sector especially
during this Covid-19 pandemic. The
pandemic has upended our ways of life,
greatly exposing loopholes in research
and reprioritisation of investment in both
local and global healthcare systems.
Our level of preparedness in managing the
pandemic, stem from leadership structures
that have been put under the test. Global
health goals like Universal Health
Coverage (UHC) have been shaken to
the core as many households globally have
been plunged into health shocks resulting
from the effects of the deadly disease.
When health treatment cost remains high,
it means hundreds of millions of people
will not be able to access healthcare
services eroding the gains already made in
achieving universal health coverage. Over
the next decade, Kenya and the world
hopes to achieve UHC, including financial
risk protection, access to quality essential
health-care services and access to safe,
effective, quality and affordable essential
medicines and vaccines for all. Though
shaken by the global pandemic, Kenya is
on the right track to achieving the global
health goals, if it takes a deliberate effort
to re-look at its leadership and governance
structures in the healthcare system.
enhancing service provision and access. A
major development has been the abolition
of user fees at primary healthcare facilities
in 2013 to encourage uptake of services.
UHC is now a national priority in Kenya,
following its inclusion among President
Uhuru Kenyatta’s ‘Big Four Agenda’ for
national sustainable development in 2018.
However, access to healthcare is out of
reach for many, largely compounded by
out of pocket expenses and the fact that
the right to health is not yet supported by
legislation. The only legal provision closer
to this is the one that states, no Kenyan
shall be denied right from treatment in
any private healthcare facility. To enable
this work, we need to look at governance
at all levels across the public and private
healthcare sectors. A major emphasis
should be on the people selected to head
health institutions. They should be good
enough to craft very clear and constructive
pathways that will allow seamless
execution of life-changing strategies.
It is worth noting that most healthcare
institutions in Kenya don’t lack good
strategies but clear governance structures
linking those strategies to actual execution.
When we have the right people leading
and guiding execution of these strategies,
we will start realising desired results on
customer satisfaction front and increase in
uptake of services, key indicators towards
universal access among others.
resources would be more appropriately
assigned, and developed in adequate
numbers and utilized productively not just
now but also in the future.
To reach this phase there is urgent need to
review a myriad of bodies legislated to have
oversight over health care institutions. The
review should focus on their mandate and
the quality of office bearers elected to sit
on their boards and most importantly the
leaders appointed to lead the institutions
they oversee. All these efforts must be
in line with global benchmarks if we are
to get the best results in our quest to
achieving global healthcare goals.
Globally, healthcare systems are disparate.
You will find that some are government
driven, others run by the private sector,
yet others are a hybrid of private-public
sectors. A hybrid healthcare system would
ideally deliver better results due to existing
synergies in terms of technical expertise
and availability of investment funds to
accelerate implementation of strategies.
Having the right mix of leaders and a
better leadership structure is therefore
now more critical than ever to ensure
the country stays on course and delivers
healthy lives and promotes well-being of
all citizens at all ages by the year 2030 as
manifested in sustainable development
goal number 3 which ensures healthy lives
and promotes well-being for all.
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For instance, Kenya unlike most countries
in the world has attained the constitutional
right to health as a fundamental human
right. From this, the sector has witnessed
formulation of a number of national
health strategies focusing on investments
towards upgrading healthcare facilities, to
With these governance structures, it
will be easy for institutions to attract
adequate healthcare financing, retention
of much needed manpower skills as well
as equipping the facilities and providing
necessary supplies for the success of UHC.
With good governance structures in place,
The writer is a healthcare and
management consultant. You can
commune with him on this or related
matters via email at: Gordon@
gordonodundo.com.
22
MAL36/20 ISSUE