The Nandi County and the National Government will soon launch a two-week aggressive campaign to ensure the locals register with the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF), with current registration standing at twelve per cent.
The County Executive Committee for Health, Ms. Ruth Koech, is determined that Nandi will fully embrace SHIF if they are sensitised properly.
She has vowed to work with National Government Administrative Officers in order to enlighten locals on the benefits of SHIF as opposed to the National Hospital Insurance Fund, which registered merely twenty per cent of Kenyans.
“We will work with the County Commissioner as we did during the COVID pandemic as one government and use all the resources we have at the County, Sub-County and villages to ensure we teach citizens the importance of SHIF, how to register, how to access and how to make payments,” she said.
According to her, the current county SHIF registration at 115,000 is small compared to over one million county population.
“In Nandi County, we have registered over 115,000 people, although it is our target to register everyone in the county,” she added.
More than 14 million Kenyans have registered with SHIF, which is not even 25 per cent of the total population.
The World Health Organisation calls for governments to ensure more than 80 per cent of the population have access to affordable health cover.
“The county has a population of almost a million people, and if, for example, half of them register, it will give a capitation of 400 million, and there will be more funding, especially in critical illness and units. This will solve many issues; for example, there will be more equipment and a health workforce in hospitals,” she said.
She also added that the SHIF insurance guarantees quality health care that will be efficient and accessible for all Kenyans because of better health finance and that the Government will be covering the needy and the less privileged.
“I encourage everyone to register; in a case of chronic illness like dialysis, SHIF will be handy and avoid cases of doing Harambees and straining families resources,” Koech revealed.
She called on the residents to ensure they upload dependents to the SHIF system.
The Health Executive hinted that the SHIF online system has been tailored to process faster pre-authorisation, billing, and transparency to ensure there will be minimal fraud.
By Ida Cheruto and Geoffrey Satia
