Confusion, mistrust plague SHIF rollout

The troubled rollout of the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) has been marked by a catalogue of technical failures and implementation challenges. From frequent portal outages to claim submission nightmares, the scheme’s shortcomings have been well documented by healthcare providers and intended beneficiaries alike.

Yet amid this chaos, an equally troubling issue has emerged: senior health officials can’t even get the name right. While the scheme is officially known as SHIF, top Ministry of Health bureaucrats persistently refer to it as “SHA”  – the acronym for the Social Health Authority, the agency that administers the fund.

This confusion starts at the very top. Health Cabinet Secretary Deborah Barasa and Medical Services Principal Secretary Harry Kimtai both use “SHA” when referring to SHIF. During a recent address to the Council of Governors in Mombasa, PS Kimtai demonstrated this very confusion. Official ministry documents perpetuate this error, and medical professionals have followed suit, with Dr Davji Atellah, secretary general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, among those using the incorrect terminology.

This may sound like a minor matter of semantics, but it reveals a deeper problem. When senior officials cannot maintain consistency in naming a flagship healthcare programme, it suggests a disturbing lack of attention to detail and precision. How can we trust these same officials to manage a complicated national health insurance scheme when they cannot even communicate its basic identity clearly?

The ripple effects of this confusion are evident. Healthcare workers, journalists and ultimately the general public have adopted this imprecise language, creating unnecessary confusion about a programme that already faces significant trust deficits.

In matters of public health policy, precision in communication isn’t optional – it’s essential. When a Cabinet secretary or principal secretary speaks imprecisely, it suggests either a lack of careful thought or, worse, a fundamental misunderstanding of their own programme. Either way, it further erodes public confidence in a scheme already struggling to gain trust.

As the government works to address SHIF’s numerous technical and operational challenges, let’s start with the basics: getting its name right. It’s the least we can expect from those entrusted with Kenya’s healthcare future.