By: N. George:
- “In the same period, our ICU capacity has increased by an impressive 502 percent; and our total hospital bed capacity has also increased significantly by 47 percent,” President Kenyatta said.
- In their efforts to actualize the UHC program the government has meet all the financing requirements in upgrading hospitals across all the 47 counties as national referral hospitals with specialized state-of-the-art medical equipment
- The government has gone further and developed the Kenya Essential Medicines List, the Essential Medicals Supplies List and the Kenya Medical Laboratory List to enhance availability of essential medicines and supplies. This is important in guiding health facilities on the selection and investment of commodities.
President Uhuru Kenyatta launched Universal Health Conference in Mombasa yesterday 07th February 2022. The health workforce conference 2022 has a theme of repositioning today’s Health Workforce for the future.
The UHC programme aims at to ensuring everyone has access to quality and affordable medical coverage by 2022. It will be achieved through major policy and administrative reforms in the medical sector and it is one of the four major pillars that President Kenyatta administration.
The ministry of health expects to upscale UHC throughout the country after piloting it in four counties namely Isiolo, Kisumu, Machakos, and Nyeri using their experience from the pilot project as their bases.
The next focus on will be to reform the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) to establish a mandatory UHC scheme, adopting an essential package of health services, and providing health coverage for an initial 1 million low-income households who will be biometrically registered.
To guide the UHC program Kenyatta administration has developed a ten-year policy.
“In this regard, my administration has developed the Universal Healthcare Coverage Policy, covering the period 2020 – 2030, to guide the acceleration of the progress in attaining Universal Health Coverage,” Kenyatta stated.
Speaking at the Port Reitz sub county hospital in Mombasa the president cited the lessons learnt from how the country dealt with Covid-19 global pandemic as some of the reasons to why there is urgent need for the country to upscale implementation of the UHC.
The UHC aims at enabling Kenyans to access medical services without struggling in payments of costs associated with such services.
“Under this pillar, we seek to eradicate the ‘poverty of dignity’ and transition our nation into an era where no Kenyan should be forced to choose between medical bills and other essential needs,” President Kenyatta said.
The president reminded Kenyans of free maternity programme launched in 2013 dubbed “Linda Mama” which is also part of UHC and it is currently benefiting more than one million mothers annually.
The government has implemented various initiatives to ensure the success of the UHC program which include investment in health infrastructure and development of a digital health platform to support the effective monitoring of the health sector.
Since his assumption of presidency in 2013, Uhuru administration has invested in health infrastructure by increasing the number of public health facilities from 4,429 facilities to the current number of 6,342 facilities, a 43 percent increase. Some of the specific units in these facilities like Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have risen by 502 percent while the hospital bed capacity has gone up by 47 percent.
“In the same period, our ICU capacity has increased by an impressive 502 percent; and our total hospital bed capacity has also increased significantly by 47 percent,” President Kenyatta said.
In their efforts to actualize the UHC program the government has meet all the financing requirements in upgrading hospitals across all the 47 counties as national referral hospitals with specialized state-of-the-art medical equipment
The government has gone further and developed the Kenya Essential Medicines List, the Essential Medicals Supplies List and the Kenya Medical Laboratory List to enhance availability of essential medicines and supplies. This is important in guiding health facilities on the selection and investment of commodities.
Human resource is an important factor for success of the UHC program. Cognizant of this the government in the last 10 years of Uhuru administration has significantly increased the capacity of community health workforce in both the public and private sector by 41 percent.
“In addition, community health coverage has also increased from 10 percent in 2013 to the current 91 percent, reflecting enhanced capacity of the community health workforce to cater for the 8,663 Community Health Units across the country,” the President said.
To manage covid-19 pandemic, the government recruited 15,234 healthcare workers under the Universal Health Coverage program.
UHC could not be successful if left to the ministry of health alone that is why several ministries have collaborated to achieve this among them the ministries of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation, Energy, ICT and Infrastructure.
President Kenyatta urged all Kenyans to adhere to Covid-19 prevention procedures prescribed by ministry of health and also avail themselves for vaccination.
“As of today, a total of 12,390,116 doses have been administered, and we are well on our way to the target we have set for ourselves of 27 million fully vaccinated Kenyans by the end of 2022,” the President said.
The Uhuru led administration has laid a firm foundation to cushion Kenyans from sometimes exorbitant medical bills by introducing a program to ensure there is universal health insurance coverage. He directed the NHIF to make sure that by June this year it has set up and operationalized a centralized healthcare provider management system to ensure efficient management and payment of claims as well as data collection. The biometric registration at NHIF will be inter-linked to the Huduma Number database.
Several leaders from the Coast region led by host Governor Hassan Joho, Amason Kingi (Kilifi), Fahim Twaha (Lamu) and Dhadho Godana (Tana River) attended the launch of UHC national roll-out.
Earlier, President Kenyatta opened this year’s international Health Workforce Conference. The three-day conference on harmonization of the curriculum and training of healthcare professionals aims at enhancing the skills of healthcare staff, a key factor in the delivery of UHC.
Other speakers at the conference included Association of Medical Councils of Africa President Dr Kgosi Letlape, Cabinet Secretaries Mutahi Kagwe (Health) and Prof George Magoha (Education), host Governor Hassan Joho and Council of Governors Chairman Martin Wambora who is also the Governor of Embu County.