Lead image for Ruto: Judge our health reforms by patients' experience, not laws passed.
The government yesterday painted a rosy picture of the country's health system, saying it had made promises to the health sector while campaigning and had delivered against all odds.
President William Ruto, however, said there was a need to measure progress honestly by listening to the experiences of Kenyans, then strengthening what is working, sealing loopholes and scaling successful innovations across the country.
He said that while reforms are important, the ultimate measure is not the laws passed or the numbers registered, but the experience of the patient in terms of dependable, affordable and dignified care.
He spoke during the Health Ministry's first-ever Kenya Health Summit, themed "Reforms Delivered, Health as a Right," aimed at discussing challenges in the health sector and sharing progress made so far.
The president said that when he took office, one of his main agendas was to revive Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which he felt was on its deathbed. UHC therefore became one of the five pillars of the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.
He said that at the time, he believed economic empowerment meant little when illness could wipe out a family's savings or push citizens into poverty. This is why he pushed for the enactment of four new health laws in 2023, which gave birth to the Social Health Authority.
"I consider it one of the greatest privileges of my public service to have been entrusted, in our time, with helping turn that national aspiration into reality," he said.
Of the 32.3 million Kenyans registered with the Social Health Authority (SHA), more than 8 million have received treatment to date. This includes about 1.2 million mothers supported to deliver safely and over 500,000 surgical procedures since its inception.