Increased Health Coverage For Reduced Disease Burden
The Government rolled out massive NHIF biometric registration with the exercise taking place in more than 50 stations spread across the County.
Governor Ndiritu Muriithi and Deputy Governor John Mwaniki led the exercise as they appealed to the County residents to enroll in NHIF to ease the burden of medical treatment.
The two led an exercise to encourage households to enroll in NHIF in 2018 making Laikipia have one of the largest concentrations of households with medical insurance cover.
The 10-day activity began on June 21 st and will end on July 1 st covering over 50 stations across the county.
NHIF is a statutory health insurance and also the cheapest in the country. The cost of having for every household is equal to the price of an egg per day, which is affordable to many lower income households.
As more people enroll to the insurance, so will the financial burden on households. Also, the number of health fundraising will gradually go down.
For example, dialysis is one of the many treatments that NHIF covers and one of the most expensive in healthcare. Many people visit Nanyuki Teaching and Referral Hospital for dialysis. One has to pay Kshs. 19,000 every week unless one has NHIF cover which caters for the entire cost.
Citizen engagement with County Officials also provided the residents with an opportunity to learn about business plan of their respective health facility towards becoming self-sustaining financially.
The forum also gave those who have not enrolled on NHIF a chance to be registered for the medical cover.
As many people enroll with NHIF, the county will have more people insured in health. A healthy people make a productive population.
Laikipia has the highest life expectancy and NHIF has played a critical role in ensuring maintenance of the same. Laikipia also has one of the best Universal Health Coverage models that has seen many organizations coming for benchmarking exercise and ultimately adopting it, including the National Government.
Preventive and promotive healthcare works better than curative. The use of the Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) and Community Health Assistants (CHAs) has facilitated in reaching out to the people in their homesteads.
There are more than 1,000 CHVs and every CHV covers around 100 families.
(Source: CGL E-Newsletter Issue 0056 | Published by ICT)
