The Government has planned specific strategies to address the impact of free
primary health care and subsidised specialised services policy, says Health Secretary Pascoe Kase. He said these strategies were being implemented, but were slow in some areas. "The National Department of Health has anticipated the pressures the Free Health Care Policy would bring on to the existing health care systems and therefore, have put in place specific strategic mitigating measures to address any perceived consequences,’’ he said. He said the mitigating measures come in the form of policies developed by the department and approved by the Government with funding allocations to implement a number of interventions. These include a total of K20 million distributed for implementation of the Free Health Care Policy. Last year, K20m was allocated which will be distributed to all health facilities soon to replace the user fees that are paid by patients. He said there have been delays in the release of these funds in some provinces treasuries, but follow ups are being made to ensure funds are released on time. Furthermore, he said the strategic interventions the Health Department had come up with to implement the policy are in the areas of staff recruitment, training, health facilities rehabilitations and upgrading, health systems management and governance, and involvement of partners to strengthen our delivery system. "The momentum is picking up pace in getting our health system right for the next 20 years. Systems improvement is not going to be fixed overnight," said Kase. Comments are closed.
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