Budget allocation to health care raised

The Kenyan government is to raise its spending on health services by 30 percent during the 2005/2006 financial year in a bid to improve medical care and make it readily available to the poor, the finance minister said on Wednesday. The move is aimed at helping the country attain some of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), finance minister David Mwiraria said as he unveiled Kenya's 2005/2006 budget in parliament. The MDGs, which were endorsed by world leaders at a summit at the UN headquarters in New York in 2000, represent commitments to reduce by half the number of people affected by poverty, hunger and ill-health by the year 2015. "The government will raise spending on health care by 30 percent in finance year 2005/06. This will increase the sector's share in total government expenditure from the current 8.6 percent to 9.9 percent," Mwiraria said. Over the next three years the amount of funding going to the health sector would be progressively raised from 24.7 billion Kenya shillings (US $ 322.2 million) at present to about 43 billion Kenya shillings ($560 million) in the 2007/08 financial year, an increase of 74 percent, he added. Increased funding would enable the country to expand immunisation coverage, reduce mother and child mortality rates as well as malaria-related deaths and implement strategies to bring down HIV/AIDS prevalence and improve access to affordable drugs. According to figures released by health minister Charity Ngilu last year, the infant mortality rate in Kenya in 2003 stood at 89 for every 1,000 live births, while the death rate among children under five was 114 per 1,000. Close to 500 women died annually due to pregnancy-related causes per 100,000 live births, she said. Some 1.24 million Kenyans are living with HIV and 200,000 of them require ARV treatment. However, only 37,680 (17 percent) of those who need treatment were currently receiving ARVs, according to figures provided by the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres. The increased budgetary allocation to health care would also be used to improve health service delivery through the decentralisation of health services and increased expenditure on preventive and basic health care. The minister also removed import duty on pharmaceutical products with a view to making medicines more affordable.