How to examine healthcare manifestos

Kenya is yet again in an electioneering period with various candidates presenting themselves for electable seats in the country. Importantly, this suffrage opportunity provides the electorate with a chance to decide on the leadership philosophy that will guide the country’s progress for the next five years.

Herein, candidates are seeking to win voters’ confidence by presenting manifestos that include their vision for our healthcare system; which is an important development facet for any government. But a pertinent question is, how then do voters examine and score these healthcare manifestos?

A basic framework that can be used to guide this examination is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) health system building blocks approach.

Herein, WHO defines an analytical framework to analyze health systems, disaggregating them into six measurable core components namely leadership and governance; service delivery; health system financing; health workforce; medical products, vaccines and technologies and health information systems.

This framework can provide a useful matrix for measuring how well the manifestos address these tenets with specific action points and timelines at all levels of electable positions; both national and regional.

For example, aspirants should detail how they will build on healthcare leadership and governance capacity in their areas of jurisdiction. Also, they should outline how they seek to increase healthcare financing, bolster health workforce to address existing shortages and avail access to primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare services.

Equally, savvy aspirants should detail how they seek to avail vaccines, technologies and build intuitive health information systems with a key focus on how to respond to rising cases of communicable and non-communicable diseases.

This framework can provide a discerning electorate an objective basis for conducting a more scrutinous probe into healthcare-related manifesto documents and declarations presented before them.

It then follows that the subsequent work of the citizenry will be to hold the various leaders to account for the promise statements that they outline in these documents.