The Ministry of Health is finalizing a policy on management of medical devices.
The policy will provide direction and guidance on medical equipment management and assist in building capacity for counties and other health service providers to ensure success of quality healthcare.
The revelations were made by the Ministry of Health, Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS), Dr. Rashid Aman, during the external stakeholders’ forum aimed at deliberating the draft Medical Devices Management policy for Kenya, at a Nairobi Hotel.
He emphasized that just like commodities, medical devices and equipment are critical components of healthcare system and will play a critical role to ensure delivery of quality health services in line with the Government’s Universal Health Coverage (UHC) goal.
“UHC goal is anchored on provision of quality, effective and efficient health services whether prevention, treatment, diagnostic or rehabilitative services. Therefore, it is important that medical devices and equipment are rationally acquired, utilized properly, perform as expected and are safe to users, patients and the general public,” he said.
He noted that although Kenya has made progress in increasing access to medical devices/equipment, acquisitions of these devices including those donated have not been rational.
He said the management of these devices have remained sub-optimal resulting to under-utilization of huge-investment medical devices, wastage of resources as a result of investing in medical devices that do not meet priority health needs of a given section of the populace, investment in medical devices which are incompatible with existing infrastructure, sometimes low quality, or do not function properly.
“It is in view of these challenges and quality concerns that the Ministry of Health initiated the process of developing a policy on management of medical devices in March 2016,” he revealed.
The policy is expected to provide direction and guidance on medical devices/equipment management and also assist in building the capacity of counties, considering they are procuring entities as well and other service providers in the health sector with proper tools and knowledge regarding medical devices.