Kenyans get universal health care for Ksh 10 daily

By Tebby Otieno
With as little as Ksh 10, Kenyans can now access healthcare through the M-Jali App. The App, a brainchild of Laikipia governor Ndiritu Muriithi, has seen the county residents enjoy Universal Health Coverage (UHC) for the last five years.

“Laikipia Imarisha Afya” is derived from the Swahili language to mean “Laikipia strengthens health.” He negotiated with the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) for residents who could not afford the monthly Kshs. 500 at once to pay for their coverage on a daily basis. A total of 125 000 households are already enrolled in them.

A team of 645 Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) were trained on how to use it. Thereafter they conducted a door-to-door campaign on NHIF. Each of them was assigned two hundred households to cover within a period of one month.

Mapping of the households was done by involving respective area chiefs in the whole Laikipia County. This enabled the team to capture villages from first to the last. Once data is entered, a team of supervisors is also able to observe all those enrolled from their gadgets.
Janerose Kanana, a 61 year old retired civil servant, was reluctant to join the program. Four months after she was enrolled in the program, Ms Kanana was diagnosed with kidney failure a condition that forces her to attend have two dialysis sessions every week. Each session costs Kshs. 9, 500 per session but she gets it free.
“It would have been an expensive venture for me, and i am sure if i had raised cash for a harambee, people would have already gotten tired of me seeking help,” she added in an interview with The Insider.

In Majengo slums of Nanyuki town, 33-year-old Nasibu Guyo, a mother of three earns her living from casual labor. Guyo was also introduced to NHIF by a health volunteer in 2017 as she walked home. The CHV helped her enroll in the NHIF program Ms Guyo and her family have been receiving health services at Nanyuki Teaching and Referral Hospital, from the cover.

“My eight-year-old child has diabetes, and I live with arthritis. The card caters for my treatments,
medications, blood transfusion bills,” She added.

Public Health Officer in charge of Community Health Services, Eunice Maina says M-Jali App has contributed to growth in demand for the service because it has eliminated transport cost. She says the app was developed from scratch with the NHIF details but they improved it with other details such as contacts of the clients, and the beneficiaries that ought to be added.

“Now with the improvement, we were able to include the father, mother, children, and even get their details like birth certificate, identification cards all this with the App.”
She adds that subscribers to the platform can access care 24 hours after being enrolled in the program.

Because different people visit various health facilities to seek services at different times, through this technology, hospitals have been interlinked. Ms Maina says this has also eliminated special referral letters within the county “Doctors and nurses are only a phone call away, and they don’t need to draft letters from the health center to the sub-county for the referrals. It is only with a touch of a button that this happens,” she added.

The Insider sought a description of the subsidy program from the Acting Deputy Director Preventive and Promotive Health Services/UHC-Focal Person, Laikipia County Dr Musa Guya.
“We had to scientifically identify households that were vulnerable and categorise them into those that were very poor to the least poor. They totalled to 12, 500 households which are going to benefit from the Laikipia County Government paying for them,” Guya says, adding that the county will pay for the subsidies every year for these households.

In an exclusive interview with The Insider, Acting Director Preventive and Promotive Health Services, Laikipia County Dr Ohas Josephine, says this is an opportunity to bring partners on board and also empower the 12, 500 households which are already in the subsidy County program.

“These households attract a cost of Kshs. 75 million per year. If accounting was supposed to perpetually pay that every year, then you know it is not sustainable”

The county is aware that it is expensive and they are in the process of building an economic base through income generating activities for the households to ensure they are independent. Dr Ohas emphasizes that this “will be an opportunity for partnerships to enable these families to stand on their own, and be able to transition from this so that now others can be helped.”

According to the Laikipia Health Department, the County had 87 dispensaries, 25 health centres, two County Referral Hospitals and seven Sub-County hospitals. Before the introduction of the M- Jali app, the county had only seven NHIF accredited facilities offering inpatient and outpatient.