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The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report unveiled at the Bomas of Kenya  has received a resounding support from medics of various disciplines, saying  the proposal to establish a health service commission (HSC) will help turn around the country’s ailing health sector.

Chapter Nine of the report addresses matters devolution which includes the healthcare function with proposal to form the commission.

“Even as we retain health as a devolved function, the human resourcing element should be transferred to a Health Service Commission,” reads the report which further states: “Health function should remain with the counties and funds should follow functions.”

Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), Kenya National Union of Nurses (Knun), National Nurses Association of Kenya (NNAK) and Kenya Progressive Nurses Association (KPNA) said such a commission would eliminate recurrent crises that have chocked the health sector for years.

KMPDU secretary Ouma Oluga is confident such commission would standardise management of the health workforce, which he said, was key to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). 

“We fully support the recommendation by BBI and we will go round to ensure that Kenyans understand why HSC is the solution to health service delivery in this country,” Oluga said in an interview with People Daily yesterday. 

Knun secretary Seth Panyako, while addressing the First East Africa Labour and Health Workforce Scientific Conference in Mombasa yesterday, said:  “For the longest time that we have served in the union, most of the time we have dwelt in seeking solutions to challenges entangling the health sector and our proposal has always been one – Health Service Commission, and nothing else.”