The County Government of Kisumu has launched a subsidy programme to support individuals in the informal sector to enable them to have health insurance cover.
In the subsidy programme dubbed Marwa, the county government will contribute KSh500 to the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF), with the balance being contributed by the beneficiaries.
While launching the scheme, Governor Prof. Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o said that the Marwa will provide a platform for low-income households to access health services at lower costs hence every resident of Kisumu to embrace the Marwa Plus.
“Let us carefully look at the scheme’s bottlenecks and confront them, so that Marwa can succeed and benefit all of us,” he said.
“As we officially launch the Marwa Insurance Subsidy Programme that will allow individuals in the informal sector who are unable to afford the KSh500 premium to contribute a portion, while the county covers the remainder. Once the SHIF is activated, we will seamlessly transition our members to the new scheme,”
The launch of Marwa Plus comes at a time barely a week after Kisumu county signed a deal with the World’s largest drug manufacturing factory, Med Auditus, that will build a factory in Kisumu at Great Lakes University of Kisumu and manufacture over 2000 drugs per day to facilitate health services in Kisumu.
With the beneficiaries giving their testimonies of the benefits of the Marwa as a great relief to the health services, this signifies the importance of Marwa health cover.
Services residents will benefit from in the health facilities are outpatient services, oncology, chemotherapy, emergency road ambulance services, referrals, maternity services, dialysis, kidney transplant, surgical services, radiology, chemotherapy and MRI.
Marwa cover holders will only require their mobile number or an identification card to access care. SHIF is currently rolling out biometric functionality to authenticate patients using the scheme and is promising transparency in scheme utilization, member engagement and timely payment of capitation through a fully digitized scheme management, potentially via the M-TIBA platform.
The county has recently launched a 24-hour emergency call center (0800720575) to manage information flow and coordination of care for Marwa members.
The Kisumu Solidarity Health Cover aligns perfectly with the vision outlined in my manifesto, which prioritizes providing access to health for all residents of Kisumu in line with Sustainable Development Goal number 3 on health and wellness, encompassing the essence of Universal Health Coverage.
By Fredrick Odiero
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