About two weeks ago, the Kenyan blogosphere had a heated debate on the number of Level 4 hospitals in the six counties of what was Nyanza Province.

The motive of the person whose utterances led to the debate was not clear but what anyone with primary level education could tell was that she is ignorant about Kenya’s healthcare system.

In a video clip that went viral, she proudly spewed half-truths not backed by any research and quoted statistics that only she knows from which cemetery she dug them up.

For a start, the entity with the “marking scheme” for classifying hospitals is the Afya House-headquartered Ministry of Health, and thus, when it says Kenyatta National Hospital is a dispensary, how do we start arguing that it is not?

Likewise, if Afya House says the private dispensary in your village is a Level Four hospital, and lists it in the Kenya Master Health Facility Registry as such, where do you get the energy to argue in a country where just thinking about poor healthcare systems can make you sick, in all senses of the word?

The adjectives ‘sick’ and ‘sickening’ that the media use in describing Kenya’s public hospitals and healthcare systems, respectively, should be retired because the situation is worse, and Afya House knows but is not bothered.

Even the State House knows that the system is broken in many places but it is fashionable to chest-thump and call the suffering citizens names, otherwise you will not be considered a shrewd politician yet you hold a PhD.

For several months, Kenyans have been wailing about poor services in public healthcare, but the Executive, through surrogates and hordes of minions on social media platforms, dismiss their harrowing experiences.

Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans are denied access to healthcare daily because the systems of the Social Health Authority and its appendage Social Health Insurance Fund are not streamlined but the government insists that all is well, and it is the patients who know not what they are talking about.

The only time the government comes close to admitting that the transition to SHA/SHIF was rushed and needs a rethink is when it talks about teething problems and promises to iron them out.

But it does little or nothing, and when questions are raised, it gets on the defensive and starts imagining that the suffering Kenyans are enemies out to sabotage its efforts at providing healthcare.

It is not just patients who are suffering. Healthcare workers are on the receiving end, too, and are spending more time wailing about their situation than on saving lives.

On Tuesday, members of the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers, doctors, and staff hired under Universal Health Coverage held a demonstration and said this government has decided to kill both patients and medical professionals. They also threatened to shut down the public healthcare system in May if their demands for better employment terms were not met.

Earlier in the week, a medical registrar died at his place of work, Kenyatta National Hospital, due to what the leadership of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) described as a broken medical system.

The man was studying at the University of Nairobi while working at the national hospital, and KMPDU said medical registrars are ensnared in a system that does not recognise them as staff and denies them salaries and healthcare benefits.

“The university admits them, takes their fees, and then dumps them at KNH. They work without supervision, generate revenue for the hospital, and when they fall sick, they cannot access the very services they provide,” KMPDU’s deputy secretary-general said.

The fact that institutions of higher learning are also part of the broken medical system is further proof that the rot is deep-rooted and does not start at the healthcare facilities where patients get frustrated.

Instead of addressing such issues and ensuring that systems work at all levels, the Health minister and principal secretaries find it chic to take out advertisements on social media platforms to shout about their imagined achievements and post photos of their shining foreheads as they prance from meeting to meeting.

In their echo chamber, service provision is top-notch, and Kenyans are not suffering at all, they just love to complain because they want to paint the government in bad light.

After all is said and nothing is done, it is their levels of incompetence and heartlessness that are top, and they are just as ignorant as the lady who cannot count the number of Level Four hospitals in Nyanza.

— The writer is the Managing Editor of the Alliance for Science (AfS). These views are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the position of AfS or its partners