Wellness & Fitness

Support funding for higher education to improve healthcare

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Doctors’ training and specialisation is an expensive and time-consuming affair that requires adequate funding. PHOTO | FILE

The Kenyan government has initiated several schemes to motivate civil servants in the public institutions.

Apart from pay rises and a raft of other benefits like medical insurance, civil servants are now also eligible for decent mortgages and a car loan. These however vary with rank and terms of service, meaning the top officers gain more than those in lower cadres.

Lost in all this are the priorities in various sectors. For instance amongst health workers and doctors in particular, opportunities to further their technical skills and knowledge ranks higher than mortgages and car loans.

Because of the kind of work we do, training and specialisation in particular is an expensive and time-consuming affair.

On average it takes a minimum of five years to seven years post undergraduate training to gain specialist recognition. Most junior doctors who would like to specialise miss out due to the costs incurred also.

Save for one private university offering post graduate scholarships stipends, the majority of public institutions do not. For those seeking to specialise abroad, the fare may be even worse.

What this means is that there is a skewed representation amongst consultants: those with enough funds to pay for themselves tend to specialise earlier than government-sponsored students.

It isn’t only in the specialisation area that the skewed trend is noted though; even at undergraduate level, both university enrolment and graduation rates may be higher for self-sponsored students.

This however isn’t just local; in a survey of the possibilities of medical school entry in Britain, it was noted that children from higher socio-economic backgrounds tended to have better chances of becoming doctors as opposed to those from lower rungs.

I am currently evaluating the transition rates post-undergraduate qualification amongst doctors over the years and the trend is almost replicate bar a few differences.

On a positive note though, the rates of specialisation are rising in terms of total annual specialists qualifying, but lower expressed as a percentage of doctors who graduate annually.

The reason is that there are fewer sponsorship opportunities by county and national governments as a percentage of the undergraduate doctors.

Because a majority of state-sponsored students also tend to remain in public service longer, to bolster the number of specialists, more resources needs to be channelled to encourage them to specialise.

To accelerate this transition especially for rural doctors, the government ought to establish and fatten the postgraduate sponsorship kitty.

Secondly as an affirmative action, perhaps those in underserved areas should get priority and more resources.

These scholarships should also be flexible enough to ensure that doctors pursue whatever specialisation area they are keen on. At present due to the limited opportunities available, many young doctors are “opting” to take whatever scholarship area arises.

On the flip side of the coin, there should not be a distinction between the recipients of the scholarship whether a government employee or a private sector doctor. Both types serve Kenyans and impact on healthcare is global.

At present counties may shy away from sponsoring doctors because of the uncertainty of their returning to work in the funding counties upon specialisation.

One proposal mooted is the creation of a medical specialisation loan. This could be run similar to the HELB kitty but administered by banks given the hiccups the HELB faces in recovering funds.

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