More than 1.5 million people have so far migrated to the Social Health Fund ahead of the October 1st deadline, with about 75, 000 people registering every day, the Ministry of Health has said.
- •The total number is still marginal compared to the 12 million members currently registered on the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).
- •The Social Health Authority (SHA), which will replace NHIF, aims to provide affordable, accessible, and quality healthcare services.
- •In addition to launching the SHA, the government is partnering with Safaricom to digitise healthcare services.
“The NHIF has its loyal members whom we are banking on to automatically migrate to the new system, we have cleaned up the data and from our end out of the 12 million, around 9.2 million loyal members are expected to automatically move with us to the new system by Tuesday next week,” Harry Kimtai, the Principal Secretary Medical Services, said noting that over 75,000 people are registering to the SHA portal every day.
Despite the controversy around the migration, the government has allocated Ksh. 6.1 billion for the SHA, which is just a fraction of the Ksh. 168 billion needed for full implementation.
The Safaricom Deal
In a statement, Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa announced that the company will partner with Apeiro Limited, a listed Dubai based company, and Konvergenz Network Solutions Limited to implement an Integrated Healthcare Information Technology System (IHTS) over the next 10 years.
One key element is the Health Information Exchange (HIE), which will enable health facilities across the country to share patient records. The project will operate under a model that allows the Ministry of Health to avoid upfront capital and operational expenses, with costs recouped through monthly installments starting in February 2025.
“This project structure allows the Ministry to deploy a comprehensive digital health solution without incurring any upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) or operational expenditure (OpEx),” said Ndegwa.
Appearing on NTV Tonight on Monday, PS Kimtai defended the Safaricom deal saying the ministry has been working with the telecommunication company since the launch of community health project.
“They have been with us for a while and we requested them to come up with another proposal to support us in digitizing our healthcare system, they submitted a proposal together with a consortium of members who we evaluated and found out to be fit,” he said.
“The shareholding of Apeiro which is a Dubai based company is available to all, it is a listed company and any one can check its shareholders. As far as we are concerned, we evaluated the documentation based on the submission by Safaricom and we found it to be above board.”