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The national government prepares to release the remaining health functions to counties amid financial, human resources for health and infrastructure chaos.

Devolution PS Terry Mbaika said yesterday a consultation impasse that saw the reversing of a decision of devolving the remaining health functions sometime back had been resolved.

She said in a few days to come, the functions will be gazetted to pave the way for the completion of the transfer, in order to facilitate the actualisation of the Universal Health Coverage.

“If you remember some time back, there was a Gazette notice which had devolved some functions, but then we de-Gazetted because we had not consulted enough, and so far we have done extensive consultation with all our stakeholders, and now we are at a point of devolving all the functions after splitting them (unbundling),” she said after the official opening of the two-day 22nd Health Sector Intergovernmental Consultative Forum.

Mbaika said a working very closely with the county governments, the national government is preparing to complete the transfer of all the functions that were meant to be devolved. “And this is not just on health only, but on all the devolved functions,” she added.

She explained that the country is at a critical point where it is shifting to a real UHC, and the reason all stakeholders in the health sector should work together, to keep the conversation alive. “When we have a healthy nation, all the other things fall in place.

“So as a state department, we are working very closely with our county governments and intergovernmental relations, because there are no two governments. Government is one, and if our counties are delivering, the national government is delivering, and the whole government is delivering,” she said.