Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Mombasa Governor Abdulswamad Nassir has announced free healthcare services to children under the age of five years at Coast General Teaching Referral Hospital (CGTRH) and all its outreach facilities.

Nasir also revealed that the county has embarked on plans to start footing medical bills for needy patients as well as enrolling thousands of families on the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) services in readiness for the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) programme

He said the free services will benefit children who are residents of Mombasa only adding that the services will include medication up to mortuary services.

“So far this is an agreement that we have had with Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital which will run in all its outreach facilities after carefully looking into our figures. But in future we hope to include other public facilities outside Coast General,” Nassir said.

The Governor at the same time announced that his administration will be releasing Ksh6 million every month to specifically cater for the treatment of needy cases at CGTRH.

While noting the move is inclined to enhance healthcare services in the county, Nassir insisted that it will be an exclusive preserve of “residents of Mombasa County.”

“The government of Mombasa has made arrangements and every month we shall be taking a Ksh6 million worth of cheque to Coast General to help particularly and I insist particularly residents of Mombasa who are needy and are unable to foot their hospital bills. I have already issued a directive to the hospital board to have a sitting with the health executive and find a way of implementing the programme,” he said.

Nassir further said that 15,000 families will be enrolled in the NHIF services in a bid to ensure universal health coverage for residents.

“We will use our health promoters to identify the 15,000 families in phase one and we believe by the end of the year the number of families will go above 20,000,” the governor announced.