A healthy population is a wealthy population, they say; but come to think of it, is health a gift or is it at a cost? Most people who have fallen ill or have had loved ones taken ill will surely bet their lives on the latter. Health is a costly affair and governments must be extremely deliberate in setting aside at least 15% of the budget every financial year to finance health (World Health Organisation). Most developing nations have not yet achieved this. In Kenya’s 2023/2024 budget, the health sector received 11% of the total budget, which allocated KES 141.2 billion (USD 973.7 million) to the sector. That is 4% shy of the required 15% cut-off, which can be approximated at KES 51.4 billion. At a glance, the figure looks attractive, but let us not peddle false optimism as the funds must correspond to the level of health care on the ground.
Even though Kenya has not met the required budgetary allocation for health, legislators have increased their spending limit by a staggering Sh7 billion for the financial year starting July 1, 2025, even as the Health ministry’s budget was cut by Sh73.4 billion (The Standard Newspaper). Quite a retrogressive move considering the country’s health care system is on the brink of collapsing due to poor financing. Among the six pillars proposed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for a functional healthcare system, health financing is indispensable. A country’s health care system is of great importance and should not be politicized.
A shift from the old health insurance model, National Health Insuarance Fund (NHIF), to the Social Health Insuarance Fund (SHIF)/ Social Health Authority (SHA) has been a menace. This is evident in public hospitals with patients giving testimonies of being denied access to health care, a right stipulated in the 2010 constitution. Humans have patience but unfortunately, the disease does not, it’s quite an unfortunate joke for a cancer patient to stop treatment and wait for the so-called ‘system’ to work fingers crossed that the malignant cells will also ‘Netflix and chill’ a little longer for the system to work before embarking on the kill mission. It’s time to fix things and not just time to do so, but time to do so really quickly.
The country’s woes were deepened when President Donald Trump of the United States signed an executive order temporarily suspending USAID funding. The USAID Kenya office had allocated $2.5 billion in its 2020 – 2025 strategic plan, averaging about $471 million annually. About 80% of this funding was allocated to healthcare, including HIV/AIDS, malaria, maternal and child health, and vaccinations. The abrupt end to this fund has already proved disastrous with many patients, especially people living with HIV/AIDS defaulting to treatment due to the unavailability of life-saving antiretroviral drugs. This endangers the whole population as Undetectable equals untransmittable, which might just become a dream that we once had, only to wake up and forget everything.
Diseases we consider controlled or eradicated are knocking on our doors. The first epidemic came in March 2025 when dysentery–like diarrhea afflicted at least 200 people in 3 different villages in south Mugirango, Kisii County, according to the Permanent Secretary for Health Mary Muthoni. The most recent is the Kala-azar epidemic in Wajir, where 550 people have been affected, with a whopping 20 succumbing to the illness. These diseases are nature’s warning of a failing health system, something that ought to be taken with the seriousness it deserves. It will be quite unfortunate to go back to the days when people walked around with pot bellies due to enlarged spleens and some emaciated skin hanging on bones on hospital beds due to AIDS. A country of sound minds should never make the mistake of neglecting its health care, it’s a suicide mission!
Succinctly put Daniel! And informative.