Challenges Faced in Enforcing Public Health Laws
Public health laws and regulations play a crucial role in the health care industry. Public health laws of Kenya protect the public from health risks and the programs administered help protect public welfare (van Dijk & Crofts, 2017). Although the law is a prominent intervention tool to achieve particular public health goals, enforcement of public health laws faces various challenges. This paper explores some of the challenges that Kenya as a nation faces in relation to the enforcement of the public health laws of Kenya concerning inadequate coordination among the responsible parties, skewed priority setting and lack of measures needed to secure voluntary compliance.
Enforcing public health laws in Kenya is a challenge particularly because these laws have no provisions or effective measures needed to encourage voluntary compliance (Sifuna & Mogere, 2002). Public health laws of Kenya emphasize on punishment as a way of securing compliance yet compliance can also be achieved through the issuing of incentives, education, as well as persuasion. This kind of perspective makes it challenging to enforce the laws because without being forced, people won’t take the initiative to comply willingly. If people were educated on the relevance of adhering to public health laws and presented with sufficient facts to persuade them on this issue, coercion would not be used as a model for securing compliance (van Dijk & Crofts, 2017). After all, if people understood what it is that authorities are enforcing, there will voluntarily adhere; compared to compliance obtained by punishment, voluntary compliance is better.
Public health law is a multifaceted field hence the enforcement of laws is largely affected by inadequate coordination among the enforcing agencies (Sifuna & Mogere, 2002). Uncoordinated law enforcing actions among the various organizations can result in counterproductive results and conflicting regimes. In Kenya today, the government has failed in that it has not clearly defined the roles to be played by various law enforcement parties and divisions making law enforcement a great challenge. The nation ought to have a directive that efficiently provides leadership as well as promotes effective and rational coordination in public health laws enforcement. Public law needs to evolve and recognize the existence of non-government actors such as the civil society, foundations and private enterprises (van Dijk & Crofts, 2017). It further needs to establish structures and instruments that will make it possible for interested parties to coordinate and collaborate and the government to oversee that the law is efficiently upheld.
The enforcement of public health laws in Kenya is a challenge due to a skewed priority setting (Sifuna & Mogere, 2002). The country is unwilling to take measures taken by the nation to create obligations that are binding and meaningful along with providing sufficient funding and services for the people. Due to the overriding principle of sovereignty and the voluntary nature of the law, the country has a limited legal framework that addresses national action to advance domestic public health. The law-making process in Kenya today is largely influenced by political expediency and national interests rather than priorities linked to public health (van Dijk & Crofts, 2017). This, in turn, affects law enforcement activities since the nation’s attention in the enforcement of public health laws is not focused at the core of national health problems but rather at the fringes. If public health law enforcement was given top priority, the government would create viable health systems and allocate sufficient funds to support this process.
Public health law is an essential element for providing citizens in every nation with protection. Though the Kenyan government has emphasized on and came up with provision laws intended to govern the public as a framework for ensuring safety, the implementation of these laws has never been easy (van Dijk & Crofts, 2017). As a developing country, the nation is yet to achieve the proper standards of collaboration between the government, non-government, and private agencies that would make law enforcement easier. With the nation failure to acknowledge public health law enforcement as a core priority, enforcing these laws will continue to be a challenge. Besides all that, the nation has failed to identify appropriate interventions that can be used to secure voluntary compliance and the use of coercion makes the process challenging.
References
Sifuna, N., & Mogere, S. (2002). Enforcing public health law in Africa: challenges and opportunities, the case of Kenya. Zam. LJ, 34, 148.
van Dijk, A., & Crofts, N. (2017). Law enforcement and public health as an emerging field. Policing and Society, 27(3), 261-275.