Ruto flags off CHPs as State puts UHC into effect

The country embarks on the road towards the implementation of the elusive Universal Health Coverage (UHC) this morning when President William Ruto flags off 100, 000 Community Health Promoters (CHPs).

The launch at Uhuru Park comes as the fate of close to 2000 employees of the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) hangs in the balance following a move by the government to replace the Fund with a Social Health Authority.

Each CHP will be responsible for 100 households and will be equipped with modern medical equipment and deployed in communities across the country.

All the CHP would be equipped with a backpack carrier bag, first aid box, jacket (medium and large), weighing scale, infrared clinical thermometer, mid-upper arm circumference (muac)tape (paediatric) and a muac measuring tape (adult).
The government is set to spend Sh3.5 billion on the programme that aims at diagnosing and detecting health issues early and managing minor ones at the community level.

While making the disclosure of the government’s commitment to launch CHP in June, President Ruto also revealed that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) would train the workers. Today’s event is a precursor to the official launch of UHC on October 20 in Kericho.

Sombre mood

Meanwhile, a sombre mood hangs over the NHIF Building located in the Community area as the institution’s top management and Board meet with the National Assembly Committee on Health today.
Already anxiety has gripped staff at the Fund as the proposed Social Health Insurance Bill, 2023 doesn’t say anything about them.

Subsequently, through their Union, the employees have petitioned the National Assembly seeking its support to amend the transitional clauses in the Bill, which they are apprehensive would render them jobless.

“There is before the National Assembly, the Social Health Insurance Bill, 2023, which in essence is geared towards repealing and/or replacing the National Health Insurance Fund Act (NHIF) upon becoming law,” says the petitioners Antony Thuo Njuguna, Naftali Muthuri Kiungu, Peterson Ngari Njeru, Milton Agina Agwen and Mohamed Siyad Gure.

And this is even as the management and Board is appearing before the Health Committee this morning at a Nairobi hotel, amid sharp divisions over the plan to scrap the Fund.

“Three quarters of the Committee members are against the move to replace the NHIF with an Authority,” a source close to the Committee revealed to the People Daily, and further intimated that most of the members have openly expressed their reservations over some proposals in the bill.
Proposed ammendment

“The proposed amendments are only meant to benefit a few people,” some vocal members of the Committee are understood to have observed.

But the president has insisted recently that there’s no room for another failure in the latest move after similar unsuccessful efforts that saw a 1998 NHIF Act repealed in December 2021, and assented into Law in January 2022.