Kenya: Bungoma County in Mass NHIF Registration Exercise

The county government has embarked on a massive registration drive for the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF ).

The exercise rolled out on Tuesday in Kanduyi Sub-county and will close on September 1 in Mt Elgon Sub-county.

The exercise, a collaboration between the county government, the Ministry of Health and NHIF, will see at least 34,000 households benefit from the free medical insurance.

According to the 2019 National Census, Bungoma County has a total of 345,000 households with 170,000 of them categorised as poor.

Scale up access

Under the scheme, 755 poor households in each of the 45 wards will be enlisted to NHIF. The initiative will see the head of the family, the spouse and their children under 18 years registered. With an average of 4.6 people per household, an estimated 156,000 stand to benefit from the cover.

This is the first phase of the agreement between counties and the national government in a bid to scale up access to healthcare.

“In the follow up to these commitments, Bungoma County is progressively recruiting more personnel towards increasing the human resource to the recommended ratio of 23 per 10,000 Population, expanding and equipping health facilities as well as provision of drugs in health centres in what is designed to ease access to health services for residents on NHIF,” the county said in a brief.