Universal Healthcare to be launched, vaccination drives to be expanded

Universal Healthcare will be launched early 2020, incorporating lessons from four pilot projects.

President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the Universal Health Coverage pilot in Kisumu on December 13, last year, after year-long preparations, making Kenya the first country in Africa to do so.

The health programme is one of President Kenyatta's Big Four to transform Kenya by 2022. It is spearheaded by Health Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki and was adopted during this year's UN General Assembly in New York.

The programme aims at ensuring all Kenyans have access to preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services at minimum financial burden.

The pilot project is underway in Kisumu, Machakos, Nyeri and Isiolo, where 3.2 million people have registered for the Afya Card to access subsidised services in public health facilities.

Issues that are being addressed include failures in some places to link UHC beneficiaries to an identification system; the need for information systems in hospitals and health care centres and the need to rationalise trained staff. Some of the needy poor also were not being reached in some pilot efforts, experts said.

The ministry is taking stock of the lessons learnt, with plans to expand coverage countywide this year.

“We view UHC not as a destination but as a continuous process, which will involve constant widening of the social safety nets to ensure no one is left behind,” Uhuru said.

Health workers are essential in ensuring the success of the UHC programme.

“Prevention is better than cure. We all have a role to play in improving the access to and quality of health services that leave no one behind,” CS Kariuki said.

Investments will be made in the health sector to ensure the provision of quality health services, she said.

The programme will focus on a Primary Health Care and will increase immunisation services, maternal and child health services, family planning, antenatal and postnatal care services; prevention of waterborne, vector-borne, TB and HIV and sexually transmitted diseases. It will also focus o improving the nutrition of pregnant women and following this through the first five years of a child's life.

Kenya will also continue administering the two life-saving vaccines launched in 2019.

The world's first anti-malaria vaccine was launched on July 15 while the HPV vaccine — which can prevent 90 per cent of all cervical cancer cases — was introduced on October 18.

About 120,000 children are targeted for malaria vaccine called Mosquirix in select hospitals in Kakamega, Vihiga, Bungoma, Busia, Kisumu, Homa Bay, Migori and Siaya counties.

The six-month-to-24-month-old children will get four doses at six, seven, nine and 24 months through an injection in the upper arm.

Malaria is among the top five killers of children aged less than five years.

The ministry targets more girls with the HPV vaccine next year, having reached more than 280,000 girls in the first month of the rollout.

At least 800,000 girls aged 10 years are targeted to receive two doses of the vaccine.

Head of Vaccines and Immunisation Programme Collins Tabu said that in future the government might consider boys after all the girls have received vaccinations.

"We are introducing the vaccine to protect our girls from cervical cancer. We do know that the vaccine might be able to protect against other conditions such as genital warts, anal cancer and even oesophagal cancer," Dr Tabu said.

The vaccination programme is backed by the World Health Organization.

The ministry is also expected to intensify the polio vaccination campaigns.

The campaigns have been going on in 11 high-risk counties of Garissa, Mandera, Wajir, Turkana, Tana River, Marsabit, Lamu, Mombasa, Kilifi, Isiolo and Nairobi.

This was after health workers found live polioviruses in sewage samples collected in Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate in April 2018.

“We are carrying out the numerous vaccination campaigns because routine immunisation coverage in the country does not reach all the children, leading to an increase in the number of susceptible children,” Health ministry head of Disease Surveillance and Epidemic Response Daniel Langat said.

Polio is caused by the poliovirus. It is spread through contact with the stool of an infected person. Its symptoms include fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiff neck, and pain in the arms and legs.

For one in 200 people with polio, the virus travels to the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis, usually in the legs. This is called paralytic polio.

This year, three cancer radiotherapy centres will be opened outside Nairobi, fulfilling the government's promise of four centres for cancer treatment.

Currently, only Kenyatta National Hospital and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital offer radiotherapy services in public hospitals.

(Edited by V. Graham)