The County Government today launched five new ambulances to improve service delivery in the health sector.
Governor James Ongwae presided over the flagging off of the five state of the art ambulances during a ceremony at the Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital.
CEC in charge of health services Sarah Omache and the County Assembly’s Health committee chairman Wilfred Monyenye witnessed the ceremony.
One and a half years ago, the County Government launched an Emergency Ambulatory Service in a collaborative arrangement with the Kenya Red Cross where each of the nine Sub Counties has a state of the art ambulance.
“In October 2013, we launched an Emergency Ambulatory Service and so far, a total of 5,955 patients especially expectant mothers have been referred using the ambulances. Realizing the huge impact of the ambulances, we have decided to acquire our own ambulances to be dispatched to the Sub County hospitals. We shall buy an additional five ambulances to cater for the needs of all level four hospitals,” said Ongwae.
The ambulances will be manned by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) trained in collaboration with Kisii University. Governor Ongwae said the staff had been carefully selected and trained and urged them to offer exemplary services to be emulated by other counties.
“With the new ambulances, we want to improve our pre-emptive healthcare services and let this be a vindication that health services under the devolved system works.
The National Government was unable to install dialysis machines for 50 years but we have installed five of them within two years. Nobody should dream of reverting health services to the national government,” said Ongwae.
Hon. Monyenye lauded the County Government for allocating substantial resources to the health sector. A total of Sh 2.5 billion has been set aside for the health sector in the 2015/2016 financial year reflecting 30 per cent of the total budget.
Summary of referrals by Emergency Ambulatory Service;
- Complications of labour – 2,310
- Injuries/surgical conditions – 1,421
- Medical conditions – 975
- Pediatric conditions – 1,086
- Gynecological conditions – 163
