The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) has invested more than Sh30 million to facilitate efficient service provision from the Kisumu regional supply chain centre, the Authority’s CEO Terry Ramadhani says.
Speaking when she hosted Homa Bay County Governor-elect Gladys Wanga in her office in mid-August, Ms Ramadhani said the authority will execute a three-pronged transformation strategy dubbed “KEMSA2.0” which is geared at enhancing its customers’ experience by providing quality, assured, efficient supply chain solutions for health commodities.
As part of the 2.0 strategy, Ramadhani pledged to provide full support to Homa Bay County, among other counties seeking to roll out tailor-made health delivery programmes. The county, she said, had accessed health supplies from KEMSA worth more than Sh122 million in the last financial year, comprising TB drugs, antiretroviral therapies, HIV test kits, antimalarials, and family planning commodities.
She said that to serve the Lake Basin Economic Bloc better, KEMSA has streamlined operations at the Kisumu Regional Supply Chain Centre, which mirrors the national supply chain centre at Embakasi, Nairobi. The facilities and systems at the centre, she said, had been improved to provide services to Kisumu, Homa Bay, Kisii, Migori, and Busia Counties,
among others.
“To serve the Nyanza region counties efficiently, KEMSA has recently managed to align its business processes and significantly automate them through the Authority’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Logistics Management Information System (LMIS) and the KEMSA e-mobile service that facilitates on-time stocks fulfilment to public health facilities,”
she said.
Ms Ramadhani noted that for counties such as Homa Bay, among others, the authority have integrated its systems to ensure a seamless and efficient order management process that will enable swifter turnaround times.
On her part, Ms Wanga pledged to drastically transform the county’s health facilities through a collaborative model encompassing public and private sector players. She said the Homa Bay County health transformation programme will focus on cutting disease prevalence with a focus on maternal and child interventions.
The Health Transformation plan was one of the critical pillars in Governor-Elect Wanga’s manifesto. It will be incorporated in the third Homa Bay County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) and the third health sector strategic and investment plan (HSSIP) to guide health sector priorities implementation.
To ensure the programme’s success, Wanga disclosed that her county will strive to ring-fence health revenues and budget allocations to guarantee settlement of pharmaceutical bills, health workers’ salaries and other operating expenses.
“You can take this to the bank, health finances and revenue in Homa Bay will be used for health operating expenses, and we shall also partner with public bodies such as KEMSA and private sector players to provide quality services,” she said.
She explained that the county’s health transformation programme would incorporate the deployment of community health workers to deliver primary health management, surveillance and outreach solutions for Malaria, HIV, noncommunicable diseases and nutrition to reduce the current disease burden.
The programme, she added, will also focus on mainstreaming health facilities and providing productivity-based reward schemes for health workers in the country.
“I have prioritized engagement with KEMSA to establish a working relationship that will allow Homa Bay to achieve the dream of being a model health service providing county in the Lake basin region,” Wanga said.
Homa Bay County has 262 health facilities, one teaching and referral hospital, and two medical training institutes (Homa Bay and Rachuonyo KMTCs).
