NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 30 — Nairobi’s youngest County Executive Committee Member tasked to lead Governor Johnson Sakaja’s health reform agenda has singled out staff welfare and customer satisfaction as key delivery areas.
Suzanne Silantoi, named Health CECM in the City Hall Cabinet in July 2023 at the age of 29, says effective delivery of healthcare requires a critical assessement of staf welfare.
“If you go to a facility, do they even have a place to lay their head if they’re on call? Do they have a place to change? Do you have a tea room?” she posed.
“A lot of our facilities didn’t even have toilets for staff,” Silantoi recalled in an interview.
The CECM highlighted the drive towards customer satisfaction as a critical pillar in healthcare delivery.
She noted effective management of healthcare records as vital in ensuring interity of operations and addressing piffereage.
“It helps us with even managing our funds and sealing corruption holes,” Silantoi.
She noted the reforms had led to the realisation of an additional Sh200 million in user fees with the revenue from facilities rising to Sh1 billion.
Born and raised in Nairobi, Silantoi schooled at Nairobi’s Moi Girls before joining Kenyatta University.
Senate bid 2017
Silantoi made the first attempt in politics in 2017 at the age of 23 after clearing campus when she unsucessfuly contested for the Nairobi Senate seat.
“After 2017, I ended up getting into the African Union space and it just so happened that the theme of that year was about youth and politics,” she recalled.
The youthful executive said she subsequently undertook a my master’s in public policy at the University of York, United Kingdom, before returning to the local political scene in 2022.
“When I came back, I decided I was going to join a winning team and go inside and be the change from the inside. So I decided to take a backseat, join the [Sakaja’s] campaign,” she said.
Silantoi made a debut in the Nairobi Executive Committee after Sakaja assigned her the Public Participation docked in his inagural Cabinet.
