The Kisumu county government has been urged to pull resources towards preventive health care services, as opposed to heavily investing in curative services.

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Preventive health care entails; providing relevant information to residents to help them curb diseases, instead of waiting for people to fall sick and get treated at various health facilities in the county.

In an interview after a forum for dissemination of Kisumu County Family Planning Situational Analysis at a Kisumu hotel on Tuesday, Kisumu Medical and Education Trust (KMET) Executive Director Monica Ogutu said, investing in preventive services will go a long way in saving lives, especially those of pregnant mothers and children.

“We need to invest a lot in preventive and promotive services, and collaborate with communities to come up with interventions. I think most of the communities have not been actively engaged but they have their own solutions,” she said.

“When Universal Health Coverage (UHC) was started in Kisumu County, the focus was on curative, but for us in maternal health, we believe that preventive care is the foundation to reduce maternal deaths,” she opined.

Her sentiments came following revelations that 60 women died in Kisumu County between July last year and June this year, with 1, 029 children dying during the same period.

The statistics are contained in a study titled Kisumu County proportion of maternal deaths.

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