Economic and Financial Aspects of Healthcare in Kenya

Healthcare
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Healthcare
Kenya is an East African country with a population of roughly 48.5 million in 2016. The capital city of Kenya in Nairobi. It is border countries are Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Somalia. Kenya also has a port along the Indian Ocean. It is a democratic country with its elections being held after five years and its political structures running from the county level. Kenya is well known for its wide range of wild animals and for scenery like The Great Rift valley. The head of the country is a president who is assisted by a vice president both chosen by the people by means of a general election.
Healthcare in Kenya faces many issues and is not accessible to all its population especially the people living in the rural areas. The country has only eight general hospitals with only one The Kenyatta National hospital equipped with almost all of the modern high tech apparatus. The three major epidemics in Kenya are HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria with about 80000 people dying of HIV every year and about 1.5 million people living with the virus. Although the healthcare in Kenya has improved over time, regions like the North Eastern and interior part of Nyanza have not yet received sufficient or any health care services and are still highly affected by diseases like Malaria and smallpox. These regions also face high infant deaths due to insufficient healthcare facilities.
Kenya has quite a number of lending institutions. Initially, there were no mobile institutions like this and most people avoided the banks due to the paperwork. This brought about the increased number of shylocks who charged extremely high-interest rates and exploited the customers. Recently there has been the introduction of mobile lending sites with the two most popular being Branch and Tala and M-shwari. Even though the mobile lending companies have lessened the burden, their interest rates are still high and exploitative. Branch has an 8.5% interest rate, Tala 11%. The banks also offer the same services.
Human capital in Kenya is really low. This is not because there are no skilled or educated Kenyans. On the contrary, Kenya has very skilled personnel in different sectors but are either unemployed or underpaid. This has led to brain drain. Most well trained Kenyans end up seeking jobs in other countries since they feel that the payment here is inadequate or they have tarmacked for a long time without any success in securing jobs. While this happens, experts from other countries occupy this positions with overrated salaries and extended allowances.
To most people who do not understand the implications of these loans, they might think that the loans help in improving the development of the country either socially, economically or politically. The truth is these loans are just temporary solutions that impose a long-term damage to the development of a country. Kenya has for the past years received large amounts of money from organizations like the IMF, the World Bank organization and other international lending institutions that are mostly multilateral. For instance, according to the standard newspaper on June 2016, Kenya has an external debt of 1.8 trillion. The international lending ins...