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SAMBURU COUNTY
GOVERNMENT
GOVERNOR’S SPEECH
COMMISIONING OF THE MPESA FOUNDATION MNCH
PROJECTS IN BARSALOI AND SUGUTA HEALTH
CENTRES.
BY
H.E. MOSES LENOLKULAL
SAMBURU COUNTY GOVERNOR
6TH JANUARY 2015
Governor’s Press Service
Samburu County Government
P.O.Box 3, 20600
Maralal
The Safaricom CEO Dr. Bob Collymore,
The AMREF Director for Africa – Dr. Lenny Bazira,
Representatives from MOH,
Samburu County Leaders;
Ladies and Gentlemen
Its great pleasure and honour to host such a high level delegation from Safaricom
top brass and national health sector stakeholders in Samburu County to witness the
successful completion and handover of phase one of the Maternal New-born Child
Health project funded by Mpesa Foundation and a consortium of partners namely,
AMREF, PharmAccess and the MOH.
This Project which initially targeted the two priority areas of Sugutu Marmar and
Barasaloi could not have come at a better time than in this period in time when this
County is facing challenges of poor health indicators prior to and since we took
over as a County Government. The support that you are extending to this County
and particularly to these two communities is quite timely and well deserved.
Samburu County has one of the highest Maternal Mortality rates of 360/100,000, a
figure that has caught our attention and concern as a County Government. This
state of affairs is majorly attributable to poor access to health services and lack of
accurate information on their health needs and rights by our population.
As a County Government we are well on course in addressing and reversing this
situation by filing the gaps in our health sector having embarked on construction of
new health facilities, upgrading and equipping of existing ones, boosting of the
health work force and improvement of the referral system.
As we do this, I highly appreciate your noble intervention through this project
whose goal and objectives are squarely in tandem with the path and direction we
are taking as a County to deal with and improve on the MNCH indicators.
I’m glad the Project has already made significant positive impact to improve
Maternal and Child health as more women are now accessible to MNCH services
and have gone a step ahead to deliver in the health facilities unlike before.
The new health infrastructural facilities in Suguta and Barsaloi will serve a huge
pastoralist population who could not have fully accessed health and MNCH
services.
The provision of an ambulance to Barsaloi community is truly a big relief to the
perennial referral challenges in this area have led to loss of life. With network
connectivity and the grading and cementing of the Opiroi-cliff road by the County
Government, the entire Barsaloi/Opiroi communities which have been hard to
reach have every reason to smile about their safety in health and the new
opportunities brought about by these developments.
I particularly want to applaud the unique m-health strategy which you are
employing, utilising mobile technology to aid Community Health Services to
improve service provision, information dissemination and the referral system.
Given the expansive nature of this County the m-health strategy is very much
appropriate to deal with our unique social and physical settlements as a monadic
community.
A crucial component of this project which is a big blessing to this County is the
Mobile Network connectivity which in addition to powering the m-Health
activities also carries important socio-economic implications including averting
insecurity in the entire County.
As you move on to upscale the project in phase two with plans to cover the whole
County, I want to thank all the partners for choosing to work in Samburu and
please be assured of my continuous and full support.
The County Health team will closely work with you to strengthen this partnership
and ensure full delivery and also harmonise the intervention’s activities with our
annual work plan accordingly.
Thank you once again and may God bless you all.