Nyamira County has rolled out biometric registration exercise for vulnerable households in the region to enable them access Universal Health Care (UHC) courtesy of NHIF.
Nyamira Deputy Governor, Dr. James Gesami while launching the biometric exercise at Nyamaiya health centre revealed that the exercise targeted 15,531 people in the county who were captured during the manual registration in February this year.
“This three day exercise will ensure that all those vulnerable people whose data was manually captured in February will now be registered biometrically to enable them access medical services without any financial challenges or having to carry physical NHIF cards,” The deputy governor stated.
“This is just phase one of the exercise and our county government intends to register more people in the near future in order to achieve one of the President’s Big Four agenda of provision of Universal Health Care (UHC) to citizens,” Dr. Gesami assured.
Speaking at the occasion, Mr. Moses Ochieng, the registration and compliance officer from NHIF in charge of the biometric exercise in Nyamira South Sub County urged all those who were registered manually to visit the mobile centres to be registered biometrically so that their information is easily accessed whenever they seek medical services at health facilities.
“NHIF introduced a policy of identifying its clients biometrically whenever they want to benefit from the NHIF insurance scheme, a system which has proved to be very efficient in accessing clients’ data and has drastically reduced cases of irregularities and impersonation by unscrupulous clients,” explained Ochieng.
Members of the public thanked the county government for the program that cushion them from huge medical bills which made many of them shy away from seeking for proper medical attention.
Jeremiah Osindi, a beneficiary of the program expressed satisfaction saying his meager earnings as a casual labourer could not enable him provide food for his family and at the same time remit NHIF monthly installments.
He urged the County government to reach out to many more needy cases to enable them access quality healthcare whenever they fall sick.
By Deborah Bochere and Zachary Makori
