The government will enrol an additional five million poor households into the NHIF scheme.
This will be a scale-up from an initial one million households spread across all 47 counties, in a programme that targets poor and vulnerable households with health insurance coverage.
“If you look at one million, working with an average family of five people that means we already have five million Kenyans registered,” Health CS Susan Wafula said.
“We plan to move the one million to five million progressively. We are going to do more of RRIs to ensure that we are registering people on NHIF and the principle of insurance is that the more we enrol then the better for everyone else.”
The cover is expected to provide beneficiaries with essential health services.
They include ailments such as mental health, dental, surgeries, and cancer treatments, and aim to cushion poor households from the high cost of accessing medical services.
This will in turn spare many families from the pain of borrowing, including seeking huge loans, to meet medical expenses.
Kenyans who can afford to secure UHC insurance cover costs at Sh6,000 per household have however been encouraged to do so to ensure they benefit from all services of the scheme.
“NHIF registration is mandatory so we ask Kenyans to register, those with any form of income let them prioritise their health because eventually, they will have to pay for it much more,” the CS said.
The registration of poor families was launched on October 31, 2020, by former President Uhuru Kenyatta.
