• Shollei said old age poverty has affected the ability of Kenyans to cater for medical services.
• She added that President William Ruto was focused on improving the ease of accessing healthcare services for all Kenyans.
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National Assembly Deputy Speaker Gladys Boss Shollei has reiterated the government’s plan to improve the healthcare system in the country.
Shollei said President William Ruto was focused on carving out a better path to ensure there is ease in accessing healthcare for all Kenyans.
“Even in the Kenya Kwanza plan top on the President’s agenda, is the issue of healthcare. You have heard them say they are going to transform NHIF so that everybody will have health cover whether employed or not,” Shollei said during an interview on Citizen TVon Monday
She said the increased cost of healthcare in the country is also linked to old age poverty which has hampered the ability of Kenyans to cater for medical expenses and services even after retiring.
“You have people who have been working and because we don’t have a culture of saving as a country or the manner in which NSSF is structured is such that someone can work thirty years and end up with seventy thousand shillings being paid out to you because we don’t have a structured and focused and redeemable way of saving,” she said.
Shollei noted that the necessary steps to overhaul these systems are currently being worked on by the government and that it is necessary to remember that such key changes cannot be done overnight.
“It will take certain fiscal interventions through the budget policies paper from the National Treasury, the discussions at Parliament, and also the general policy of the government now is that we have to slow down on our borrowing,” she said.
“If we’re spending most of the money we have as a country to service debt, then there will be nothing left for the other costs that you need to put in on Kenya’s tables.”
In addition, Shollei said that healthcare costs need to be resolved not by making the matter a headline story but by checking that the necessary interventions are being undertaken by the relevant agencies.