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The national government will engage approximately 100,000 community health volunteers in a comprehensive plan aimed at promoting preventive health care in the country.

Senate Health Committee chair Jackson Mandago (pictured) said this will be part of the Universal Health Care programme.

Speaking during a tour to public hospitals in Murang’a, Mandago said the CHVs will act as agents to promote health practices at the grassroots level.

The Uasin Gishu Senator said the reason why hospitals are overflowing with patients is because there are no preventive care programmes and the focus is only in curative health care.

“The moment we abandoned preventive health care is when the disease burden went up and we have to find a way of dealing with this situation,” said Mandago.

He said the CHVs will undergo training and be equipped with necessary tools.

“We want to focus more on how to prevent disease rather than having people falling sick and going to the hospital where the financial burden is taking a toll on them,” he said.

The said the national government will work closely with the counties is the implementation of a seamless UHC saying the lessons learnt from the piloting of the program will help them make better structures.

Mandago led the members of the committee in inspecting Murang’a County Referral Hospital, Maragua and Muriranjas Hospital after a wide spread cry from the public that they were getting poor services.

He said the committee will do a report on the findings and present it to the Senate and also issue recommendations to the county government for improvement.

The chairperson, however, said based on the preliminary observation, the facilities need a facelift, upgrade of equipment and adequate staff to facilitate provision of better services.

Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu who is a member of the committee said he got numerous calls from the public who wanted a probe done in the three facilities with medics being accused of medical negligence.

Nyutu also said there were allegations that there are no drugs in the facilities and the patients are forced to buy from private outlets.

“A few weeks ago, I requested for a report on the status of the facilities and that’s why the team came to the ground,” he said.