Probe mobile clinics anew | Nation

Kenya’s mobile clinics project was once a flowery idea whose scent was to bring health services closer to the people. However, the stench of its outcome shows the extent of the withered flower.

Last week, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly concluded their investigations on the shadowy multimillion-shilling project with nothing substantial to show for it. Instead, the afflicted Kenyans who are missing out on key healthcare services will continue suffering as the ghost operations of mobile clinics were given a clean bill of health.

The MPs’ verdict that the more than 100 clinics in question are operational shows their lack of touch with reality: A spot check by our journalists in different counties confirmed that the containers meant for the project are either non-existent or not doing the intended work. In the places where they were to be installed, health facilities are not easy to come by.

Mothers in such areas miss out on antenatal clinics owing to long distances from their homes to the hospitals. Children miss out on important childhood immunisation schedules and people living with HIV/Aids and some with diabetes may also miss out on essential lifesaving drugs.

This begs the question, what was the MPs’ motive in denying Kenyans their right and derailing progress towards universal health coverage? The extent of betrayal by the MPs who sit in this critical parliamentary committee to the people they represent is inconceivable. Who ‘greased’ whose hands? Why would they unanimously agree to sanitise a project whose filth has crippled health at the grassroots level despite it being visionary at the implementation stage?

The MPs must show proof of the project working as they claim; else, stakeholders on corruption have to probe further.