The Makueni County Government on Monday rolled out a biometric registration of residents under the Universal Health Care (UHC) programme.
The Health Executive, Dr. Andrew Mulwa said the exercise targets to register 240,000 households.
Already 34,000 households who had registered manually will be required to register afresh biometrically.
Dr. Mulwa said the exercise ends on June 30 and will be conducted in 70 registration centers across the county.
“The mass registration will be done in the ten main health facilities in the county, besides we will have two outreach registration posts in each of the 30 wards,” he added.
Addressing the press on Monday in his office, Dr. Mulwa said the biometric registration will create a data base that will help the county track the expenditure on the UHC and plan appropriately for quality health care services.
“The biometric registration will help us monitor patients.It will also help identify people from the same family, who will
now be able access health care from different facilities at the same time,”noted the health executive.
He said that each household will be required to pay the annual fee of Sh. 500 but residents over 65 years of age will be registered for free.
‘‘Residents over 65 years will only produce their IDs during the registration. The rest will be required to pay the
subscription fee and provide birth certificates for children. Those aged 24 but in school are also covered,’’he added.
Dr. Mulwa called on residents to turn out in large numbers for the exercise.
‘‘The UHC is in line with the national government’s big four agenda and since Makueni was the pioneer we would like to improve the programme and we ask residents to come and register in large numbers,’’he added.
Makueni launched the UHC dubbed Makueni Care in 2016 and each household is required to register with Sh.500 to access medical services. The beneficiaries are issued with a card making them eligible for both inpatient and outpatient health care services at any of the health facilities in the county.
Some of the services offered under the programme include laboratory tests, X-rays and surgical services.
By Roselyne Kavoo
