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One of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four agenda, Universal Health Care (UHC) will be Kenya’s highlight in the World Health Assembly event held in Geneva. Switzerland.
Apart from attending main meetings, Kenya’s delegation led by Health Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki will be seeking to sell the UHC idea to potential partners in the six-day event that starts Monday 21.
To this effect, a statement from the Ministry indicated that the CS’s delegation included representatives from Council of Governors and the parliament.
This is in the spirit that health is now a devolved function.
The discussions will revolve around approval of the Draft thirteenth general programme of work, 2019–2023, Public health preparedness and response, Polio transition and post-certification, Health, environment and climate change among others.
“In addition, Kenya has also been given the role of representing the African group in discussions regarding Maternal, infant and young child nutrition,” read the ministry’s statement.
Kenya’s plan to sell her UHC idea in one of the biggest health event marries the WHA this year’s theme Health for all: Commit to Universal Health Coverage. This is WHA 71st session.
Additionally, Kenya will also be showcasing her major milestones in the health sector in the World Health Assembly(WHA) held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Among the milestones Kenya will be lauded for is the eradication of guinea worm eradiation, following World Health Organisation(WHO) confirmation in December 2017 after no trace of the disease was found in the last three years.
The CS will also be meeting with Switzerland’s health Minister who is also the country’s president, Cuban health minister, Director General of WHO Dr Tedros Adhanom and humanitarian ambassador Grace Machel.
“She(CS) will also meet multilateral partners like the Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiative(Gavi), Joint United Nations Programmes on HIV/AIDS(Unaids) and Global Fund for Tuberculosis, malaria and HIV,” read the statement.
Global Fund is one of Kenya’s largest donors in HIV/AIDS programmes with the latest funding being a to a tune of Sh33 billion. At least Sh21.6 billion will be used to scale up uptake of anti-retroviral treatment for 300,000 persons living with HIV.
Currently, there are 1.6 million persons living with the virus but just about a million are on the lifesaving tablets.
Other issues to be discussed in the event include an update of the Ebola outbreal in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which Kenya has already taken stringent screening measures at its points of entry.
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