The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) has done well to improve its coverage of kidney treatment.
Its cover for dialysis has particularly helped ease the financial and social strain that such treatments place on thousands of families across Kenya.
Today, fewer are the cases of patients missing their dialysis sessions for months on end because they can’t afford to pay Sh9,000 out of pocket every week.
The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) has done well to improve its coverage of kidney treatment. Its cover for dialysis has particularly helped ease the financial and social strain that such treatments place on thousands of families across Kenya.
Today, fewer are the cases of patients missing their dialysis sessions for months on end because they can’t afford to pay Sh9,000 out of pocket every week.
That said, kidney transplant patients need more benefits to improve their treatment outcomes. Currently, NHIF pays up to Sh500,000 for their surgery.
Patients, however need to take lifelong drugs that are not part of the NHIF kidney cover benefits. And so they are forced to regularly resort to fundraising to meet the Sh40,000 they need every month for the drugs.
Those who have exhausted their fundraising options resort to going for two dialysis sessions a week, which cost NHIF Sh18,000.
We urge NHIF to include the cost of the drugs in the enhanced benefits package especially since experts reckon it stands to save over half the cost it incurs paying for the dialysis of the transplant patients who’ve been forced to resort to the option to keep their new organs.
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