The Council of Governors held the Devolution Conference in Eldoret between 14th August and 18th August 2023.The conference is held by the end of every 2 years. This year’s theme was “10 years of Devolution: The Present and the Future” while the Sub-theme was “Driving Transformation from the local level: County governments as the Centre of economic development”. The Conference presented Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital (KUTRRH) with an opportunity to showcase the strides made in health especially in reversing outbound medical tourism and bringing awareness to the counties on the services KUTRRH offers.
The Conference had over 300 exhibitors and 10,000 delegates. KUTRRH procured 2 booths to deal with the number of visitors. The delegates that represented KUTRRH during the plenary sessions included the CEO, Mr. Ahmed Dagane, the Director of Planning, Development and Partnerships, Dr Gituma Mureithi and the Director of Training, Research, and Innovation, Dr. Chris Ouma.
The Partnerships department sought to gain contacts of the new County Executive Committee (CEC) Members; strengthen relations with the Counties already in partnership with the Hospital; create a contact database for the second phase of creating partnerships with the County Governments that KUTRRH is yet to sign an MOU with and acquire contacts for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in line with the department’s 2023/2024 PC targets. The department acquired 45/47 CEC Health and County Medical Director contacts. The missing county contacts are those of Kwale and Tharaka Nithi, who were not present at the exhibition.
Nonetheless, plans are underway to get their contacts. The department has been engaging a number of MDAs within the quarter (Q1, 2023/24). As such the devolution conference accorded the department a great opportunity for in-person engagement with a number of partnerships in the pipeline such as Kenya Tourism Board, Higher education Loans Board, Kenya Revenue Authority, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.
The devolution conference provided the department with an indispensable opportunity to meet a pool of potential partners, corporate clients, and key players in the healthcare industry within the country. All in all, the Devolution Conference proved to be very productive for the KUTRRH team that attended, especially in terms of networking.