National Hospital Insurance Fund chief executive officer Geoffrey Mwangi
talks about changes to healthcare purchasing, at Crown Plaza Hotel in
Nairobi on November 2, 2017. The NHIF wants to register more Kenyans.
PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The government is seeking to register 8.5 million new members
into the health insurance scheme, Health Cabinet Secretary Sicily
Kariuki said on Wednesday.
This will raise the total
number of National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) members to 25 million,
up from the current 16.5 million.
The objective is to reduce cost of medical care and achieve universal healthcare.
The government further intends to rollout the mass enrolment scheme to cover 46 million people by 2022.
Ms
Kariuki said the target was in line with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big
Four Agenda of providing Kenyans with universal healthcare by 2022.
“As
part of the drive to enroll more Kenyans for the universal healthcare,
we are targeting an increase in NHIF enrolment to 25 million Kenyans in
the next 12 months,” she said after delivering a keynote address at the
Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) Annual Science and Health
(Kash) conference.
“We will work on access to commodities, facilities, and
regulating the cost of services to avoid risk to Kenyans’ financial
status within the scheme so that they do not suffer economic deprivation
as a result,” she said.
This year’s conference themed
"Health Research for Sustainable Development" will see presentations by
450 participants with over 146 papers from research institutions and
academicians being presented over a three-day period.
The
forum is also a parallel regional training for senior editors and
science writers from Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya on solution
journalism by ScienceAfrica from Kenya and the US-based Solution
Journalism Network.
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