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ONYIMBI NELSON: Reduce financial burden to secure national health

It remains a privilege rather than an equal right accessible to the general citizenry

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by ONYIMBA NELSON

News18 November 2021 - 11:47
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In Summary


•With this knowledge, it would be prudent to base efforts towards securing health financing to cut these costs in an already straining economy.

•A healthy nation starts with every citizen’s health.

A child hold a copy of his parents NHIF card.

About 58 years post-independence and 55 years after the formation of the NHIF, the constitutional promise of the highest attainable standards of health in Kenya remains a privilege rather than an equal right accessible to the general citizenry.

The high out-of-pocket costs drive around 1.5 million Kenyans to poverty annually. For example in 2013, the Ministry of Health found that outpatient costs accounted for 78 per cent of a family’s out-of-pocket expenses averaging about Sh1,254.

With this knowledge, it would be prudent to base efforts towards securing health financing to cut these costs in an already straining economy.

A healthy nation starts with every citizen’s health.

However, this happens to be far from it.

Only a percentage of Kenyans are easily accessing health services, and some of these services are now aligned to an upper-class citizenry.

Records show that only about 16 per cent of Kenyans are covered by NHIF, which should be the primary insurance for the nation.  About 32 private insurance firms cover barely 1 per cent of citizens.

Even with these, glaring inequalities are existing between the insurance sector- NHIF offering services and facilities limited to the individual contributions, limited flexibility and insanely long queues with a lot of time taken to access the same.

Recently, we had the introduction of Universal Health Coverage, in four pilot counties.

However, almost four years later, nothing much can be attributed to this as success stories, rather than unending blame-games between the counties, the national treasury and Kemsa.

Questions of quality and accessibility of commodities and services remain unanswered, as the common mwananchi continues to wallow in their misery.

What we have to show is a country with a health workforce marred by strikes and the absence of crucial services such as youth-friendly services and mental health provisions.

It is about time we tasked the government with becoming intentional with matters of health insurance.

Some countries, due to our wonderful policies and blueprints on paper, have been able to benchmark and successfully set up our ideas to fruition, ideas that we have surrendered to corruption and irresponsibility.

Other countries such as Rwanda continue to thrive with their traditional community health insurance models.

We need to take up such best practices through focused research to secure our health for long-term cumulative economic success.

The writer is a policy and budget advocate at NAYA Kenya

Edited by Kiilu Damaris

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