Health sector gets big cut for second straight year

 Kenya continued to dilute the budget meant for the health sector in a consecutive downward spiral during Kenya Kwanza government’s second financial year since coming to office.

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u slashed the budget for the sector by Sh11 billion from Sh138 billion in the last Financial Year to Sh127 billion for the 2024-2025 fiscal period.

In the 2023-2024 financial year, the sector’s budget was reduced from the Sh146.8 billion allocated by the Uhuru Kenyatta regime to Sh141.2 billion, suffering a cut of Sh5.6 billion.

Kenyans and donors would see this as an irony for a government that has made numerous changes in its approach to implement the Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which includes far-reaching reforms in the social health financing spectrum.

“Towards this end, Mr. Speaker, I have proposed an allocation of Ksh 127.0 billion to the health sector to support various activities and programmes,” the CS said in Parliament yesterday when he presented the budget estimates for the country’s next one year economic journey. 

Administration commitment

At the onset of the just ended fiscal year, Prof Ndung’u reinforced President William Ruto’s pledge of his Administration’s commitment to realise the constitutional right to health in the shortest time possible by delivering a UHC system that had experienced numerous false starts.

“The new Financial Year’s budget entails promoting access to quality and affordable healthcare through the UHC programme,” he told Parliament in June 2023. 

Unfortunately, still the budget for UHC suffered cuts by a huge Sh44.3 billion to Sh18.4 billion from Sh62.3 billion in the just ended Financial Year.

In yesterday’s estimates, it’s not clearly understood whether the Sh4.2 billion allocated for UHC coordination and management unit, covers the whole programme.

However, several components of the UHC, as the government focuses on strengthening Primary Healthcare, mostly the newly created ones, received funds to actualise Ruto’s UHC dream.

One of those components is the Primary Healthcare Fund under the Social Health Authority (SHA) which was allocated Sh4.1 billion.

Still under SHA, Prof. Ndung’u allocated the Emergency Chronic and Illness Fund, a total of Sh2 billion.