The government, through the Ministry of Health, will now integrate the registration of children on the Social Health Authority (SHA) portal with the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS).
Director General (DG) of Health Patrick Amoth made the announcement on Thursday while speaking on a local vernacular station, stating that the move aims to streamline the updating of dependants' information and ensure a seamless registration process.
"We will be working with the Ministry of Education on their NEMIS system to triangulate additional information to help with the registration process," Amoth stated.
However, he acknowledged that the NEMIS system had some challenges in terms of data accuracy. "At the beginning of this, we noted that the NEMIS system had a few challenges in terms of the data they had. We will be working with them to ensure the system is flawless so that we can just pick information from NEMIS and upload it on the SHA system," he added.
The announcement comes a day after the Ministry of Health enabled SHA users to include their spouses and children on the portal.
According to the DG, the SHA dependents section will only allow parents to list children up to the age of 18 as dependents. However, he noted that the government would extend eligibility beyond 18 for individuals still in school, provided they submit proper documentation as proof of enrollment.
Meanwhile, Amoth revealed that the government will retrain all healthcare workers nationwide on how to use the SHA portal after it was established that many practitioners were unfamiliar with the system.
Additionally, he stated that the registration process will be conducted across SHA branch offices and at Huduma centres across the country.
HIV& AIDs Shortage
Responding to concerns about the looming crisis following U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order freezing HIV & AIDS drug funding, Amoth reassured that Kenya had sufficient drug supplies to last until November this year.
He further assured that by November, the government would have allocated funds for the procurement of additional drugs, as the provisions for the next budget cycle would be in place.
Before Trump's freeze, the antiretroviral (ARV) medications procurement was primarily funded through three main schemes: government financing, Global Fund donations, and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
At the time of the freeze, PEPFAR had reimbursed a total of Ksh7.9 billion out of the Ksh25 billion it was initially set to reimburse.
