This archive report was first published on 11 November 2021.
Published on November 11, 2021, the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) has assured donors and development partners that ongoing reforms at the Authority are being undertaken in compliance with due process and labour laws.
KEMSA Chairperson Mary Mwadime said the reforms are part of the Authority's efforts to provide a solid foundation for the uptake of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) goal among other national healthcare development plans.
"A dysfunctional KEMSA slows down healthcare delivery goals and is a liability to the envisaged positive national healthcare outcomes," she said. "The Board is committed to facilitating reforms to set the authority on a recovery path."
The reforms include settling outstanding bills amounting to more than Ksh6 billion with county governments, and restructuring the Authority's organisational structure to align with industry-accepted standards for a health commodities and technologies procurement organisation.
Ms Mwadime assured that the reforms are not a knee-jerk reaction, but are based on a well-considered reform plan formulated by the new KEMSA Board. The Board is working closely with a mission-critical core KEMSA Management Team and a multi-agency team to be drawn from public sector experts.
Currently, the Authority is operating under a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), which was formulated and executed before the release of non-core staff last week. The multi-agency operations team is handling logistics, human resource management, quality assurance, physical and information security, among other dockets.
The KEMSA Board is working under a tight deadline to facilitate organisational changes, with the goal of restoring the Authority's glory as a strategic State Corporation mandated to undertake roles and responsibilities that ensure supply chain excellence for Health Products and Technologies (HPTs) countrywide.
