Leased medical equipment programme best bet for Kenyan healthcare

Melany Chesire, a radiographer using an MRI machine at the Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital leased under the Medical Leasing Equipment Scheme.[Mercy Kahenda, Standard]

Leased medical equipment still presents the best choice for the Kenyan healthcare despite the pitfalls experienced in its implementation.

GE Healthcare says the Managed Equipment Service (MES) programme offers the best strategy in managing Kenya’s health sector.

The programme, which entails deploying leased medical equipment to county hospitals has faced challenges since 2014, when its implementation started.

The Parliament’s Departmental Committee on Health dismissed the Sh38 billion project, saying it failed to live up to its expectations.

It said that due to ill-preparedness among health facilities, they have been unable to make use of equipment under the programme.

The challenges notwithstanding, players in the sector say the initiative has made major gains in the country’s healthcare.

An often cited success is the saving of 50,000 lives since the start of the programme, with illnesses having being diagnosed early and treated in time.

The programme saw different healthcare equipment providers lease machines to the Government that are then deployed to county hospitals. The firms are charged with ensuring the equipment is operational throughout the contract period.

Radiology equipment

Among these firms is American firm GE Healthcare, which supplied radiology equipment to the 98 hospitals across all counties that were earmarked for the MES project.

“We are lowering the costs of diagnostics by enabling effective equipment to be deployed in markets like Kenya cost-effectively,” said GE Healthcare Africa President Farid Fezoua.

“The MES in 98 hospitals across the 47 countries have kind of illustrated what can be done at scale to shift from a system of procurement of healthcare equipment that was kind of obsolete because it did not satisfy the requirements that are essential to delivering service to patients in the long term with the highest level of equality and access.”

Mr Fezoua noted that MES in Kenya would be able to deal with the challenges that the health sector has experienced in the past whereby the equipment is retired once it breaks down or the suppliers do not train healthcare providers to operate the machines.

Fezoua said GE has over the past four years trained more than 1 000 healthcare providers - reducing the cost of radiology services as well as enabling them to access the services at health facilities close to them.

GE Healthcare Chief Executive and President Kieran Murphy urged Kenya to use the equipment as a springboard to deliver enhanced medical care.