The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority has welcomed the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) national scale-up efforts and confirmed its organizational readiness to support the rollout of affordable healthcare.

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday launched the national UHC Scale-Up, an essential delivery under the government’s Big Four agenda following the success of the UHC pilot project in 2018.

While welcoming the scale-up, Kemsa chairperson Mary Mwadime confirmed that the agency had actively participated in the UHC pilot project and is now ready to facilitate the scale-up to all 47 counties.

Within the national UHC scale-up commitments, the government has committed to ensuring 100 percent access to essential medicines for all Kenyans visiting public health centres.

In the last financial year and towards the achievement of UHC, Kemsa procured Health Products and Technologies (HPTs) worth Kes35.84 billion, with about 11,500 health facilities managing 97 percent of these commodities.

Mwadime said the agency has put in place strategic measures to contribute to the attainment of UHC as a strategic delivery partner.

“At the UHC pilot stage, we learnt some invaluable lessons that we will apply to facilitate the provision of equitable, affordable and quality health services. Kemsa is a crucial pillar on this journey, and we celebrate the milestone,” she said from Port Reitz Hospital in Mombasa at the launch of the UHC National scale-up programme.

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The Kemsa boss further added that the authority maintains a robust infrastructure and supply chain capacity to guarantee access and delivery of quality HPTs to about 11,500 facilities in the national public health care system.

On his part, Kemsa Acting CEO John Kabuchi confirmed that the Authority had undertaken specific measures including KEMSA policy alignment efforts with the draft UHC Policy 2020-2030 earlier developed to guide the realization of the UHC.

He disclosed that the authority is collaborating with players in the public health system, including the Ministry of Health, the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) and county governments to actively ensure supply chain excellence to the remotest parts of the country for essential medicines, among other HPTs.

“Kemsa’s role in the success of UHC is the provision of quality, accessible and affordable Health Products and Technologies sourced from local and international suppliers,” Kabuchi said.

“The ongoing efforts to scale up the rollout of UHC are laudable and KEMSA will be at hand to play its facilitative role particularly the competitive sourcing, quality assurance, warehousing and the last mile delivery of essential medicines countrywide.”

Mwadime reiterated that “at Kemsa, we have re-engineered many of our financial management and procurement processes and adopted information technology systems. This is to ensure that we achieve excellence by providing critical assurance of ethical conduct to all our stakeholders.”

All Kemsa business processes are fully automated through the authority’s Enterprise Resource Planning, Logistics Management Information System and the KEMSA e-mobile service that facilitate on-time stocks fulfilment to public health facilities countrywide.

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