Nyamira County Governor Amos Nyaribo has launched a 100-day drive for mass registration of Nyamira residents into the Social Health Authority (SHA) platform.
Nyaribo said that he decided to initiate a 100-day registration drive to ensure no resident in Nyamira is locked out of the programme, especially the vulnerable population, so that they could readily access affordable quality health care services in all County facilities.
“All our 116 public health facilities have been registered, licensed and approved by SHA. All residents who will be registered will not be required to pay to access health services in our Level 2 and 3 health facilities. Maternity services will be free across all levels of care. To access healthcare services in Level 4 and 5 public hospitals, one has to be a member of the Social Health Insurance (SHI) and be a fully paid member,” Nyaribo stated.
The county boss confirmed and greatly appreciated support from Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) which gave the county government 130 ICT gadgets to be used by Community Health Assistants (CHA) and health facilities to facilitate in registering residents right in the villages where they live.
“We have a big number of our residents in the county who do not have smart phones to aid in self-registration to SHA or simply lack adequate knowledge on the registration procedure to SHA. Such people are the ones our community health assistants will be helping to register in their homes or when they visit health facilities to reduce their burden of hospital medical bills when they have sought for treatment services,” the Governor said.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Mathare hospital Dr. Julius Ogato explained that SHA was the one way through which the government would achieve the Universal Health Care (UHC) as enshrined in the President’s Bottom Up Transformative Agenda (BETA) so that the burden of huge medical bills which force people to organize for fund drives or sell their properties to offset would be a thing of the past.
The County SHA Manager Robert Rono confirmed, “Nyamira County has already registered a total of 86,000 people to SHA which is 14.3% of the total population and we are optimistic in the next two weeks with this 100-day registration launch Nyamira will registered over 40% of the county’s population”.
The registration exercise of Nyamira residents to SHA will be supported both by National Government Administration Officers (NGAO) and the County Health Department to ensure all unregistered residents in the county are registered.
By Deborah Bochere
