[stop-imf] Kenya health minister says ignore WB/IMF

[Robert Weissman]

<http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=37494>http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=37494

The Standard
Tueday March 7, 2006

Ignore the World Bank on health, says minister


By Elizabeth Mwai

Kenya should ignore donor restrictions and employ health workers
needed urgently countrywide, an assistant minister has said.

The country needs 10,000 health workers to offer improved services,
Health assistant minister Enock Kibunguchy said.

"We have to put our foot down and employ. We can tell the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to go to hell," Kibunguchy said.

Speaking at an Aids workshop in Nairobi on Monday, Kibunguchy said
the Government should ignore the freeze imposed by the World Bank and IMF.

He said 7,000 nurses, 600 doctors and 2,000 clinicians and laboratory
experts were urgently needed in various health centres.

Kibunguchy said over 1,000 nurses leave the country every year yet
the Government cannot hire more.

He said about 130,000 infants born yearly to HIV-positive mothers
were not being cared for effectively for lack of medical staff. He
said the scaling up of the prevention of mother-to-child transmission
of HIV could only be achieved if there was adequate personnel and
infrastructure.