This information was made public via an official announcement released by the Ministry on its official Twitter account on Friday, July 28, 2023.
“The Ministry of Health has been given permission to send medical interns to 58 centers across the nation. A list of the interns who have been deployed under new guidelines has since been made public by the ministry of health. The statement stated that circumstances beyond the Ministry’s control were to blame for the delayed deployment.
The statement also stated that the government would send 1,901 medical intern students to various locations, paying them a monthly net allowance of Sh1,000,000 to cover housing, food, and transportation.
It should be emphasized that from the beginning of the year, medical interns have been asking that the government deploy them for internships.
Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, the Minister of Health, informed the members of Parliament this year that the Ministry lacked the funds to send medical interns on internships. She added that the Ministry of Finance had only given $8 billion of the necessary $80 billion for pre-medical interns, making it challenging for the Ministry to deploy them without assurance that the remaining funds will be forthcoming.
Aceng stated that in order to send out medical interns, the Ministry would require roughly sh80 billion.
“We needed sh80.4 billion to deploy the 1901 interns, and we allocated sh8 billion for interns and sh2 billion for senior house officers from that sum. Therefore, we are unable to deploy interns until we are sure that the sh80.4b will be provided,” she said.
During the plenary, Aceng also explained that the sh22 billion the Ministry of Health got was not intended for pre-medical interns but rather to cover the arrears for the 935 medical interns who completed.
“The sh22 billion the Ministry of Health received is not for the deployment of the 1901 pre-medical interns but rather to pay the arrears of the 935 interns who completed internships in April this year,” she emphasized.
