The latest scandal at Kemsa is contained in an audit by the Global Fund. It highlights the disappearance of essential products such as mosquito nets, condoms and crucial drugs for tuberculosis (TB) worth millions of dollars from Kemsa warehouses.
Also, fake suppliers demanded billions from the agency, which is accused of “overstating the value of medicines by Sh640 million” with up to “100 times” for some types! The supplies allegedly ended up being “resold to the black market or private chemists”.
This may not be news to Kemsa but it is shocking to poor patients and the donor community, on whom we rely to support our public health sector. With many scandals in the health sector, and most of those touching on Kemsa, Kenya has perfected the art of biting the hand that feeds it. Even more shocking is the lack of action to prosecute corrupt individuals behind the scams within the Ministry of Health.
Corruption
The current Kemsa management has distanced itself from the audit report by the UN body by claiming that the thefts took place before they entered office. That is not the point.
The crucial matter that ought to be answered by the government and those in charge of the anti-corruption department is why, to date, given the many financial malpractices and thefts in the health sector, nobody has been held responsible.
The elephant in the room that is deliberately being ignored is corruption in the health sector. As poor patients are forced to an early grave by lack of treatment, the corrupt are allowed to live large and dance on the graves of their victims.
A healthy nation is critical for a country that takes the health of its citizens seriously, especially that of the poor. Kenya, clearly, is not if it keeps covering up for those who embezzle funds and medicines meant to support its universal health coverage (UHC) programme, which, sadly, now appears to be just another political fad.
Litany of scandals
Politicisation of UHC and all the other schemes that came with the ‘Big Four Agenda’ has become a curse rather than a blessing. The litany of scandals that have been allowed to go on unchecked within the Health ministry proves that the government was never serious about UHC in the first place. It was just another mantra to be used by politicians to give false hope.
UHC should never be a political toy for those privately insured by the taxpayers but a socioeconomic right worth protecting. The life of the poor in Kenya has become easily disposable and their desperation a convenient excuse to extort money from donors to benefit greedy officials within the government.
The Global Fund is not the only organisation to lament the theft of their donations. Donations by the US government and Chinese billionaire Jack Ma fell into the hands of corrupt officials too.
Proven itself an ingrate
Billions meant to help with the Covid-19 pandemic hardly reached the hospitals they were meant to. The audit on tenders for PPEs to protect healthcare workers unearthed, perhaps, one of the most shameful and shocking corruption scandals in Kenya; even more disturbing, having occurred in the middle of a pandemic!
The country has proven itself an ingrate by stealing from the countries and organisations willing to support its vulnerable public healthcare. It can only clean this stain by showing the world that its serious by eradicating corruption within the public health sector.
Change of management at Kemsa is nothing without real focus in changing attitudes at Kemsa, EACC and the criminal justice system. There can be no UHC without organisations such as Kemsa and NHIF being managed well.
The government has buried its head in the sand and hopes that the scandals will go away but they won’t. This stench will hover until radical steps are taken to give these institutions and the government credibility in the donor community.
The government’s inaction to prosecute those behind the grand corruption only makes it more complicit. If it had a heart and conscience, it would fight corruption for the children who die of malaria and HIV patients lacking treatment due to it.
It should do it for those who die as blood donations meant for them end up in the black market. It should fight corruption in the Health Ministry to establish a UHC scheme that lives true to its ethos—of spreading affordable and quality healthcare across the four corners of the country. Enough lip service has been paid to UHC; it’s time to act on thieves undermining it.
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Cancer and dialysis machines offer hope to many patients. Their constant breakdowns within the public health sector point to incompetence and/or corruption.
Poor patients with cancer and kidney diseases deserve uninterrupted treatment just as the rich and politicians on private insurance. It’s irresponsible, cruel, criminal and inhumane to fail to repair and replenish the life-saving machines.
The money paid to private hospitals to treat public sector patients should be used to maintain the machines and replenish them regularly. Who is sabotaging UHC? BY DAILY NATION