Plight of Baringo family unable to get heart surgery for 2-year-old daughter under SHA

It’s been two years now since Gideon Kemboi and his wife Mary received their twins, a boy and a girl.

While the boy hit the developmental signs of progress, his sister lagged, and soon it became clear why: the little girl, literally and figuratively, was suffering from a heart condition.

“Tulienda kwa hospitali tukapata kwamba mtoto ako na shida ya moyo, damu inachanganyika ile oxygenated and ile ingine,” Gideon Kemboi, her father, says.

“Mtoto akapatikana aka na shimo kwa moyo, tumefanya maharambee mingi lakini kufikia sasa hatuna pesa yoyote. Naendanga check-up, na hilo check-up ni pesa hadi tumefika pesa imeisha.”

The family's long and torturous journey to get help for their little girl has seen them come all the way from Baringo, to Eldoret to Nairobi, but that help has been too little at best.

The family says its hope for financing their daughter’s Ksh.2 million surgery to be carried out in India lay with the government’s Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC) under the Social Health Authority (SHA), but that hasn’t been forthcoming.

“Walituambia tuende Kenyatta National Hospital, tukafatilia maneno ya SHA tukaambiwa SHA haijasign contract na hospital ya India,” Kemboi says.

The girl’s grandfather, Joseph Chepkerio, adds: “Hii shida imefika mahali hatuwezi, tumeuza kila kitu, hata shamba sasa hatuna kitu ingine.”

Despite the government’s assurance that SHA was the way out of solving health care, Gideon Kemboi like many other Kenyans are still struggling to access some of the benefits of the new health care coverage.

The Ministry of Health however says the UHC rolled out last October is working well.

“We have had over 18 million people registered so far; I have gone around and I have seen it working,” Cabinet Secretary Deborah Barasa said recently.

But Gideon’s family says it is yet to see this efficiency and the lack of access to the life-saving surgery for their daughter is proof that there is a lot that is yet to be done in the SHA rollout.

They want the Health CS to intervene to ensure the life of their child is saved.