While Kenya has made significant reforms in the health sector towards achieving universal health coverage, attaining quality and affordable health care needs aggressive progression of the three strategic pillars of manufacturing, food security and affordable housing under the Big Four Agenda.

1. How the Big Four pillars can reduce the cost of
healthcare in Kenya
By Gordon Otieno Odundo
While Kenya has made significant reforms in the health sector towards achieving
universal health coverage, attaining quality and affordable health care needs aggressive
progression of the three strategic pillars of manufacturing, food security and affordable
housing under the Big Four Agenda.
The most urgent thing the government must do is to accelerate scale up the
manufacturing sector by promoting development of local industries that manufacture
drugs and provision of an enabling environment to support growth of existing but
small manufacturers to boost their local output. Increasing production of
pharmaceuticals, lab reagents as well as other medical supplies in the local market will
reduce the overall cost of healthcare and enable sustainability of UHC as presently
most of these items are imported.
What this means is the country will significantly lower importation costs especially on
foreign exchange, with the money saved put into other essential use. Subsequently,
this will lead to a drop in direct cost of importing medical equipment and allowing the
Medical Equipment Service lease to County governments at a lower cost, thereby
freeing taxpayers’ money to providing essential drugs to health facilities across Kenya.
With no access to safe and clean water, sanitation, durable housing structures, the
spread of infectious diseases are greatly increased contributing to the high prevalence
of infectious diseases especially within informal settlements.

2. Similarly, lack of standardized housing climate adapted and ventilated homes lowers
the chances of achieving 100% health coverage. It should be noted that rapid
urbanization has caused lifestyle changes with sedentary lifestyles and pollution
resulting in a great rise in infectious diseases.
Achieving provision of decent homes faster can help the country tame its susceptibility
to infectious diseases and make Kenya ready to fight off prevalence of deadly disease
outbreaks like the dreaded Corona virus that has taken away many lives and thousands
infected in China.
We therefore need to see increased activities around Private Public Partnership (PPPs)
to aggressively drive the affordable housing agenda towards provision of
environmentally friendly houses to thousands of Kenyans.
Aspects like improved ventilation and sanitation must be the first consideration to
ensure wellbeing of dwellers by reducing possibility and instances of infectious
diseases and chronic illnesses.
Achieving provision of decent homes faster can help the country tame its susceptibility
to chronic illnesses and make Kenya ready to fight off prevalence of deadly disease
outbreaks like the dreaded Corona virus that has taken away many lives and thousands
infected in China.
Already, a cloud of fear hangs in the country over the level of the country’s
preparedness to deal with such a calamity, despite current efforts to control traffic
flow into the country from airports and border entry points. One can only imagine the
catastrophic effect that an outbreak of corona virus would have presently due to our
limited capacity to produce essential medical supplies, our unplanned and congested
urban settlements.
Finally, the country’s growing population needs to have adequate food supply that is
also nutritious to promote healthy living that can support development of a healthy
economy. Agriculture was once the backbone of the Kenyan economy. While its
significance cannot be overemphasized, agriculture accounts for 30% of the GDP and
a further 65% of Kenya’s exports, many Kenyans still lack access to healthy foods.
To achieve 100% universal health care, Kenya must not only feed itself, but feed itself
well to ensure the citizenry do not slide to poor health on deficiency of essential
nutrients.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ensuring optimum nutrition at
each stage of a person’s life is the foundation of attaining universal health coverage.
WHO further states that nutrition is the foundation for health and well- being as a key

3. element of primary health care playing an essential role in prevention, which is better
than cure.
If advancements can be made in the pillars of manufacturing, food security and
affordable housing, all Kenyans will be able to receive affordable health care without
the risk of financial catastrophe. In order to ensure that quality healthcare services are
being offered to Kenyans, the government must accelerate Kenya’s intentions of being
a globally competitive and prosperous nation.
However, attaining UHC will mean advancing all key pillars of the Big Four Agenda
owing to the inter-dependency of each.