Human Resource for Health Committee holds It’s second meeting
The human resource committee held it’s second committee meeting for the year 2018, on 29th May 2018 at Kenya Healthcare Federation (KHF) offices, from 8:00am to 9:00am.The meeting was chaired by Mr. Ken Auma – Committee chair. In his opening remarks, he informed the attendees that there has been a directive for the Cuban doctors to be deployed where they will work in the country for a period of one year. This was information was relayed by the permanent secretary for health, Mr. Peter Tum during the ministerial stakeholder forum.
He further advised the committee that KHF should identify the true needs of human resource for health so that in future and through strong public-private partnership (PPP), the government acts in the interest of it’s citizen.
Mr. Auma reminded the committee about the upcoming Emergency Care Technician symposium that will be held on 28th – 29th June 2018 at Safari Park Hotel Nairobi. He further advised the committees that there is need to address the following: what is their strategy in terms of growth, do they have a structured approach of engagement, how many are they and what is the capacity?
Mr. Auma updated the members on the Community Health Extension Workers (CHEW) curriculum which is a MOH initiative under the Community Health and Development Unit in collaboration with Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC). The CHEWs are medics with diverse medical backgrounds (engineers, nutritionists, labs, etc.) and there is a need to harmonize their knowledge, so they can deliver healthcare at the community level.
The CHEW curriculum is completed and signed by the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) Director. It has also been pre-tested by 70 CHEWs from 17 counties.
Currently, there are many health records information officers (HRIOS) and they have an association but not fully recognized and there is need to recognize them. There are two upcoming conferences on health records. They include a one-day conference in September at The Nairobi Hospital and a one-week conference organized by the Health Records Association. The venue for the second meeting will be communicated later.
Moreover, the chairman informed the committee that the Ministry of Health has a database on all enrolled professionals but there is need to classify different human resource for health professionals for example classifying Clinicians who have done health information in the health system. Therefore there is need for KHF to push the Ministry to ensure live documents on human resource information. There is need to involve the Health Records Professional Associations in the data collection and storage process. There was a suggestion that KHF should come up with an awarding system for the external partners, whom KHF works with like the Counties thereafter do more appreciation first to its members then later awards.
There was a uniform agreement that that KHF should not sit back and assume all will go well whenever there are critical issues, KHF should come up with appropriate strategies towards such healthcare matters. Dr. Christine Sadia added that KHF needs to do SWOT of good balance and take a strong stand on arising matter in the health sector.