Public health officers to down tools over nine issues

Public health practitioners want the government to meet nine demands or they down their tools.

Kenya Environmental Health and Public Health Practitioners Union is seeking proper recognition of its members, and even increased budgetary allocation, lamenting that what’s given to them is paltry.

The union’s secretary general Brown Ashira led other officials to demand restructuring of the Public Health Council.

They are seeking review of the Public Health Officers and Technicians Council Act.

“We want this Act to be realigned to the current dispensation and the new Constitution,” Ashira said in a letter addressed to the Presidency, governors, the ministries of Health, Public Service and Labour

They are demanding that professionals such as Community Health Officers be regulated, and their roles harmonised, because amalgamation of duties breeds confusion.

Central coordination
Ashira said central coordination will enhance the fight against preventable diseases and illness while reducing disease burdens at the household level and in the community. “If you look at the Act of the Council Section 13 of 2012 does not realign with the current dispensation. It’s talking about the director of medical services.

“Currently, we don’t have a director of medical services, but a director general of health, and also talks about issues to do with the chief public health officer, yet that’s not the case,” he pointed out.

“Allocate an equivalent or greater resource to preventive health as is done for curative services,” he said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), Ashira argued, recommends that countries allocate at least 1 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product to Primary Health Care as part of their overall health expenditure.

They also called for reconstitution of the Social Health Authority (SHA) board.