By Obegi Malack
The government will begin monitoring and evaluation of comprehensive medical insurance cover for secondary school students (EduAfya) and Biometric registration of students next week.
In a memo to County directors of education and Principals, the Ministry of Education’s State Department of Early Learning and Basic Education indicated that it will start the monitoring and evaluation in conjunction with the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).
The Biometric registration will commence on 29th August, 2022 and monitoring and evaluation will begin on 5th September, 2022.
The Ministry is targeting County Directors, Chairpersons of Parents Associations, Principals of Secondary schools, National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) Managers of and finally health care providers who are stakeholders.
The government initiated the Eduafya health programme in 2018 through NHIF for students in public secondary schools countrywide as part of the government’s “Big-Four” Agenda.
It was introduced to enable students access quality health services thereby easing the burden from parents and guardians.
The Ministry normally retains Ksh1,350 out of the total allocation of Ksh2,000 from the medical vote head to fund the medical cover under the five-year contract between the ministry and NHIF, with the rest of the vote head funds (Ksh650) being distributed to schools to meet other medical and insurance related expenses.
According to research conducted by university of Nairobi’s Institute of Development Studies (IDS) the key challenge of students accessing health services under the School EduAfya programme was lack of the required NEMIS number.
Other challenges were limited involvement of the adolescents in the design of the EduAfya scheme and lack of sufficient information regarding the scheme.
