Kemsa graft may kill UHC

Kemsa warehouse

The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority Embakasi warehouse in Nairobi.

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

By  Dollarman Fatinato

The Centre for the Study of Adolescence

What you need to know:

  • Kemsa is yet to clear its name from the Covid-19 procurement graft.
  • Investment in health is not enough where corruption is a crisis.

The sarcasm Kenyans get served every time they turn on the radio or TV or flip a newspaper page is beyond sobriety. It’s barely two months since President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the universal health coverage (UHC) scale-up, committing to all Kenyans’ access to high-quality healthcare without facing financial hardship.

How do explain to a young mother of five children who is unable to initiate spacing of pregnancy (which is critical for the health of the mother and child) because contraceptives are not available in the facilities but disappeared at Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) warehouses? 

She cannot afford a method at the nearby clinic or pharmacy because she has sacrificed the coin to put food on the table due to inflations of basic and complex food and commodities going over the roof.

Related

Procurement graft

The same country that believes to be on track towards UHC expects Kenyans to feel safe and confident to subscribe to the parastatal National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) despite losing 908,000 mosquito nets, 1.1 million condoms and tuberculosis (TB) medicines worth Sh10 million through Kemsa, as the new report by Global Fund outlines. 

This comes before Kemsa has cleared its name from the Covid-19 procurement graft. Several procurement irregularities were also cited in the report by the UN-backed agency, putting Kenya on the verge of losing over Sh50 billion in health funding.

The journey to UHC cannot just be fuelled by financial means and advertisement but expands to building public trust. Investment in health is not enough where corruption is a crisis. Numerous reports of corruption at the Ministry of Health, Kemsa and NHIF give a glimpse of why the health sector is struggling and UHC may be a pipe dream. 

Tackling corruption in the health sector should now be looked into with the greater context of human rights violations with action against perpetrators swift and decisive to end the culture. 

Mr Fatinato is the youth coordinator at the Centre for the Study of Adolescence. [email protected]. @DollarmanKE

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