Description of Session
1. Brief Summary The Government of Kenya launched the Big 4 Agenda in 2018 and identified Food Security, Affordable Housing, Manufacturing and Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as the areas to drive growth in the country over the next four years. UHC is a component of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under Goal 3, which is to “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages”. Under this goal, the specific target for UHC is to “Achieve UHC, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all”. Achieving universal health coverage is aimed at guarantying the right to health and reduce extreme poverty. Through the Kenya Ministry of Health (MOH), the Government of Kenya is making a huge investment aimed at ensuring all households have access to affordable and quality healthcare by the year 2022 ahead of the SDG target of 2030. MOH has taken a tax-based approach through which the devolved county governments receive grants from the national treasury to pay for health services offered at no cost to the public. MOH has started the implementation with a pilot phase including four counties – Isiolo, Kisumu, Machakos and Nyeri that were selected for their diversities. Moving towards UHC, especially in the pilot phase, is a dynamic process that requires a solid monitoring and review system to inform policy leaders and decision makers exactly where they are, the areas to focus their efforts and if their actions are making a difference. Monitoring that feeds an ongoing learning process of UHC implementation is thus fundamental to the achievement of UHC objectives. The Kenya MOH developed the UHC framework with indicators and targets for service coverage of health interventions and for the financial protection of all. In order to provide information to policymakers on the implementation process, MOH developed a dashboard to electronically provide current or near real-time data on selected priority indicators. The UHC dashboard will be accessible to both policy makers and implementer at national and county level.
