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{
    "id": 1496673,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1496673/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 635,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Endebess, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) Robert Pukose",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for the opportunity to respond to the issues raised by Hon. Lilian Gogo. First and foremost, I think it is good for us to understand what we are talking about. The Authority is called the Social Health Authority, abbreviated as SHA. The Authority is a creation of this House. It runs three funds, namely: the Social Health Insurance Fund, the Emergency Chronic and Critical Care Fund, and the Primary Health Care Fund. All the three funds now replace the previous fund, that is, the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), which had a lot of challenges. Previous Governments tried to see how best to introduce the Universal Health Care (UHC). We conducted pilot projects in Nyeri, Machakos, Kisumu and other areas to see how we could introduce the UHC. When President Ruto came into power, he brought Bills to operationalise the achievement of UHC as one of his agenda items in the Manifesto of UDA and Kenya Kwanza Coalition. In this regard, we passed the Digital Health Bill, the Social Health Authority Bill, the Primary Health Care Bill, and the Facility Improvement Fund. Hon. Members, on 1st October, the Government began rolling out the programme on providing Kenyans with Universal Health Care. It is five weeks now. As we speak today, this programme has had several successes, including 39,000 Kenyans who have attended renal care visits. We have 81,000 Kenyans who have had admissions, 12,000 cancer care visits and 49,000 consultations at the primary care unit. What is the impact of this? We have had renal and haematology care, where Ksh430 million was approved for life-saving dialysis care over the past five weeks. We have more than Ksh300 million approved for cancer care. The average turn-around time for pre-authorization has now improved. Initially, we had challenges but as we speak today the turn-around time is two hours. We have had challenges with private hospitals in accepting and running this programme. In the four major referral hospitals – the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Kenyatta National Hospital, Kenyatta University Teaching and Referral Hospital, Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital, and Spinal Injury Hospital—as we speak today, no single patient has gone there and turned away."
}