State to Map Out Medical Facilities For Quality under SHA
KENYA : The government is collaborating with the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC) and the Kenya Health Professions Oversight Authority (KHPOA) to map out health facilities across the country, ensuring they are staffed by professionals and offer quality health services to Kenyans.
Health Cabinet Secretary (CS) Dr. Deborah Barasa stated that the mapping aims to identify areas where specific interventions are needed and provide necessary support.
“This is an initiative to ensure that we map out all our health facilities across the country and identify where specific interventions are needed and offer the necessary support,” said the CS.
By December, medication will be available at primary health care facilities, providing affordable and quality medicines for patients.
The CS also highlighted the importance of media in promoting the success of the Social Health Authority (SHA), which has already registered over 13 million people.
They have been meeting with support groups representing kidney patients undergoing dialysis and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy to understand their experiences and work together to ensure the success of SHA.
“We have come up with interventions to ensure that drugs are supplied to the last mile, that is, the primary health care facilities, and by December we will have medication at these centres, and patients will be able to access affordable and quality medicines,” said Dr. Barasa.
SHA Head of Benefits Design, Dr. Samson Kuhora, said that they are employing Proxy Means Testing (PMT), a model which uses the social economic factors within a household to estimate how much they are earning and then calculate the SHA premium of 2.75 percent of the household income for the informal or unemployed people.
Dr. Kuhora said that the PMT is used to establish income levels for households and it is meant to bring about equity, adding that there is a platform that allows a household to appeal if they feel there are issues with the calculations on their required payments.
“This means testing tools drive the key concept of SHA, which is the ability to pay where a household which is able to generate more income contributes more into the pool,” explained Dr. Kuhora.
“We are aware that some Kenyans have seasonal incomes like farmers, and we have been engaging the co-operatives as aggregators so that they can pay for their members and then they recover the money over time from sales of produce,” said Dr. Kuhora.
The new health Scheme, Social Health Insurance Fund, SHIF, was recently rolled out, replacing the National Health Insurance Fund, NHIF, in efforts to ensure all Kenyans have access to Health Services.