CS Mbadi confirms that the government has no plan of changing the new health model SHA.
According to him, the exercise needs patience.
The Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has recently maintained that the government would not change the Social Health Authority despite appeals by many Kenyans over challenges in accessing healthcare.
Speaking during an interview on Spice FM, Mbadi clarified that the challenges witnessed during the transition from NHIF to SHA were minimal to warrant an overhaul of the new health insurance system.
He further disclosed that the solution to the current crisis within the health sector was not affecting the whole system but rather correcting the glitches faced during the implementation of the health scheme.
“Kenyans have been questioning why we have SHA and not NHIF, the latter was not working, Kenyans must understand that if a system is not working, we get a system that is working, it may have challenges from the beginning but that does not mean we get back to a system that does not work.’’
He also noted that exercising patience on the matter would be better, stating that the government was working to restore normalcy by correcting the hitches.
CS Mbadi went ahead to compare Kenyans to Lot’s wife, a figure in the bible who turned into a pillar of salt after looking back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as her family was fleeing.
“The problem with us is that if we attempt to get something to work then we have challenges, instead of correcting challenges and moving forward, we tend to go back,” CS Mbadi commented.Kenyans tend to think like Lot’s wife who was told not to look back but she looked back and remained at the same place. So we need to be looking forward. If SHA has challenges, we need to deal with these challenges.”
CS Mbadi’s move comes barely hours after Health Cabinet Secretary Deborah Barasa announced that a task force had been established to ensure all Kenyans, including cancer patients and those on dialysis, access essential healthcare services.
