It is possible to change the dependents including the children and spouses registered in your Social Health Authority (SHA) cover, SHA leaders have revealed.
While Kenyans are still getting accustomed to the SHA system which is barely a year old, questions continue to arise regarding its operations.
During a live space session on X (formally Twitter) on Wednesday, Kenyans sought to find out if it was possible to change dependents, especially spouses.
If you and the partner who you had registered under your SHA as dependents separate, divorce, or in the worst scenario die, it is possible to make those changes and add a new spouse after moving on.
Requirements
Explaining to Kenyans how it's done, SHA representative, Gilbert Osoro, revealed that it is very possible and easy for a contributor to amend the list of the beneficiaries but they would need evidence in the form of documents to support their cases.
In the event of a new spouse, the contributor must submit an ID and proof of marriage which is a marriage certificate.
In the event of a divorce, the member must produce a decree of divorce to show that indeed they are divorced and want them off their SHA scheme.
"The law has made it clear that for a union of marriage, it must be registered and the proof is the marriage certificate, in events of divorce then the member must produce a decree of divorce and in the unfortunate events of death, they must adduce a death certificate for purposes of carrying out amendments," Osoro explained.
For parents who have adopted children, they must produce a court order that pronounces that the children have been adopted, and if the child has a guardian, the parents must produce a will or a court order. For biological children, parents must produce birth certificates and birth notifications.
How to Change
After producing all these documents for the specific case, the member may then proceed to their SHA system, log in, upload the documents then update the details of the dependents if they have already registered.
For members who have not registered for SHA, at the point of registration, the SHA portal provides a section for adding dependents. Members should go to the SHA portal, click Add Dependent then specify the type of dependent they want to add be it a spouse or children and then register them.
In adding a spouse, the spouse must, first of all, have registered to SHA independently because registration is based on households.
Osoro revealed that the biggest challenge that they were facing was that while Kenyans have registered for SHA, they do not log into the system to update their details explaining why sometimes patients go to the hospital and are told that they are not registered.
