Amidst the state of public confusion on Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF), Homa Bay County has vowed to ensure the more than 1 million citizens register through a ten-day Rapid Results Initiative (RRI).
This initiative will be conducted as a joint effort between the National and county governments in the drive to sensitize citizens on SHIF to garner more membership in Homa Bay.
On Monday, the county had registered 119 residents on SHA as many citizens countrywide are shying away from the registration exercise.
Homa Bay County Commissioner Moses Lilan said the figure was a result of their tireless efforts to bring people to register after the Ministry of Health took all Deputy County Commissioners from every sub county through a capacity building and rollout session on Social Health Authority in Nairobi.
“From there we embarked on the sensitization of the public to register and the 119 are part of what we have been able to achieve until now,” he said.
The CC spoke during a meeting in Homa Bay aimed at unveiling strategies on various ways to bring the public to register with the fund.
He stated that it was only through registration that the public can qualify and get to benefit from what SHA has to offer, adding, “If there is anything that the government has been working so hard to achieve, then it is the universal health coverage and SHA is the vehicle that will take us to affordable and accessible quality health care.”
He was positive that by the end of the ten days of the RRI, almost everyone in Homa Bay would have registered as they have deployed teams to every sub county and wards, subdivisions, locations, sub locations and villages to get more citizens onboard.
“We have activated the village elders and the NGAO’s and every other infrastructure in this drive to ensure the success in the rollout of SHA. Our people will move door-to-do to ensure the one million citizens are registered,” said the CC.
With this, the county has formulated its daily targets as the CC assured of meeting these targets.
Lilan said they will work within a multi-agency framework and implored the public and private sectors to work together as no single agency had the capacity to achieve this objective alone.
Governor Gladys Wanga on her side echoed the same sentiments saying that the national government cannot achieve this single handedly and neither can the county government, calling for a joint effort by everyone in the drive.
“The train has left the station and there is no going back to NHIF. We have an incentive as a county to register our people and in these 10 days, we will be moving from house to house to register our people,” she added.
She further informed that her administration will identify and cater for the SHA payment of the underprivileged in the county.
By Sitna Omar
