The government has announced that patients who paid for healthcare services out-of-pocket since the rollout of the Social Health Authority (SHA) began will be refunded.

The announcement comes amid persistent confusion and frustrations across the country, with patients encountering challenges while trying to access services that were previously covered under the now-defunct National Health Insurance Fund..

“All patients who have paid out-of-pocket, reach out to us, and we shall refund,” said Dr Abdi Mohamed, the chairman of SHA. 

The challenges, according to SHA, are linked to the transition from NHIF to SHA, which is in its seventh day. Under the SHA, registered beneficiaries are entitled to free primary healthcare services at level two dispensaries, level three health centres, select level four hospitals, and emergency services at all health facilities. 

However, delays in contract renewal with certain private and faith-based hospitals have led to gaps in service provision.

• Rethink new health model to save Kenyans from high medical costs

“All public hospitals, from level two to six, have been contracted and are offering services to SHA-registered beneficiaries. As of today, 1,442 private and faith-based health facilities have returned newly signed contracts and are now providing services,” said Mohamed.

Mohamed was speaking in Nairobi after a consultative meeting with the representatives of private and faith-based healthcare providers. 

To ensure that healthcare services remain accessible during the transition, SHA has set a deadline for the healthcare providers to return signed contracts by Tuesday this week.

Mohamed also stated that service providers have committed to ensuring continued access to care for SHA beneficiaries during the period.  

To address the issue of pending bills, the government has formed a committee chaired by the principal secretary for medical services, Harry Kimutai, which will focus on fast-tracking the settlement of outstanding bills owed to healthcare facilities.

Kimutai acknowledged that pending bills have been a significant issue, straining the resources of service providers.

“The resources of service providers are dwindling, and they are struggling to cope with additional patients seeking care at their facilities. We are moving swiftly to clear these pending bills to support the facilities in providing uninterrupted service delivery,” he said. 

Dr Brian Lishenga, the chairperson of the Rural and Urban Private Hospital Association of Kenya, said the settlement of pending bills is not only a sign of goodwill, but is essential for them to be able to provide services.  By Emmanuel Kipchumba, The Standard

The Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs arrest and revelations have underlined for me the complaint I hear young women say, “But all the good men are gay!”

It sounds like an exaggeration when they say it, but now I am starting to believe it. The number of married couples implicated in P. Diddy’s mostly gay orgies is mind-blowing, and to think how many empires are going to crumble by the time this case is done... 

Which brings me to Uganda, where it is true that many spouses are finding themselves forced into open marriages they never really signed up for. I have written before about married corporate women in Kampala that have given up on their husbands’ cheating ways, as the circle of wives allegedly indulge one another in lesbian unions to ‘balance the boat’.

What has happened to the institution of marriage?

A Ugandan living and working in Canada once called to say he had caught his wife red-handed with the neighbour’s wife, having sex on their couch and he did not know how to proceed. I had no answers, either, but I guess he figured it out somehow, because they are still ‘happily’ married.

Then, you just have to talk to young married couples to be shocked by how many wives admit to their husbands regularly ‘losing their way’ and ending up in the wrong opening, or at the least, trying and begging to go up there. 

Because of how much homosexuality is frowned upon in Uganda and most of Africa – not to mention the recent anti-homosexuality law – many gay men are marrying women in lavish weddings and then subjecting them to non-consensual anal sex. I will never understand some things, I admit. 

Similarly, a young woman’s video has been circulating on TikTok about her search for justice after a man she was dating forced her into anal sex and messed up her digestive system, and she is now in and out of hospitals. Reading the drama surrounding P. Diddy’s orgies and the thousand bottles of baby oil seized from his mansion brings this debate back to these pages.

Why are gay/bisexual men marrying purely heterosexual women? Because the latter can never reconcile herself with the former’s preferences; it is just what it is. A former religion-based marriage counsellor said when she was practicing, the number of women complaining about forced anal sex during her therapy sessions, was overwhelming. 

God-fearing women who were not ready to divorce their husbands, had no idea how to interest their men in the vagina instead of its neighbour. 

“I didn’t know how to break it to them that their darlings were gay men hiding in the marriages,” she said.

And I thought that only happened in Uganda and Africa: gay men and lesbians marrying in heterosexual unions to eliminate any queries and suspicion. P. Diddy’s case shows otherwise, despite being in the ‘land of the free/brave’. The kind of stories we are going to read about this week...ho!

The number of celebrities possibly shaking in their boots and holding their breath at what is going to jump out of the woodworks next... I would not want to be in their shoes.

If anybody thought Jeffrey Epstein’s was a bad case, wait for this Diddy thing to fully unravel. The things people do for money and power, as the rest of us in this small world stand and covet their glitter, forgetting that not all of it is gold! By Carolyne Nakazibwe, The Observer

The near-unanimous denunciation of President William Ruto’s administration during Friday’s public participation exercise in Nairobi must have been an eye-opener for the Head of State, eager to move on from the recent youth-led uprising that brought his government to its knees. 

Nothing seems to be working for the Head of State. The health sector is collapsing and a controversial health insurance scheme is leaving Kenyans uneasy. Higher education is a mess, with an experimental funding model pushing access to a university education beyond the reach of many students from vulnerable backgrounds.

The controversy is spilled to a proposed takeover of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, which has been mostly kept secret by the government. The energy sector is not without its mishaps of frequent blackouts and a similar takeover.

While flour (unga) prices have stabilised in recent months, the general feeling is that the cost of living is still high. Unemployment is as prevalent as ever, with the government seeking unrealistic solutions such as exporting labour.

Amid all these, the political elite is detached from reality and is pushing issues that Kenyans say are of little concern to them, such as the impeachment of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. Through that push, the masses seem to have seen an opportunity to get rid of both the President and his deputy and have adopted the clarion call Kufa makanga, kufa dereva. 

There is also the proposed extension of the presidential term from five to seven years by Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei.

The government’s aloofness was captured by many Kenyans during the public participation exercise. The remarks by Caroline Cheptoo, who called out politicians at the Bomas of Kenya, for instance, exemplify the despair among the citizenry. 

“At least hata leo mmetukumbuka. Hamtuitangi hizi vitu, anyway. Leo mmekumbuka vijana na wananchi kwa sababu mna shida zenu (At least you have called us here today (Friday). You never call us to such places. You have remembered the youth and the citizenry because you have issues among yourselves),” she said in an emotional speech.

The President has made the case that the nationwide protests and growing discontent were mostly a product of misinformation and sponsorship by his detractors. With that assumption, he has largely swept the issues raised by Generation Z and millennial protesters under the carpet as a new partnership with former Prime Minister Raila Odinga offering him some calm after the June storm of demos.

Bringing Raila on board, through their broad-based arrangement, was the clearest indication that the Head of State did not intend to address demands by the youth. Raila was the political solution that would help fizzle out mounting dissent, or so it was thought. 

More than three months since youth stormed Parliament, the strongest expression of the youth’s contempt for tone-deaf lawmakers, the country is in as much the same situation. The masses are as angry as they were then. Their message is the same: Ruto, and his entire administration, must go.

“Ruto promised good governance and delivered the opposite,” noted Francis Owakah, who teaches philosophy at the University of Nairobi.

University don Gitile Naituli also said the President underdelivered on his promises.

“The problem is that they have no idea that Kenyans think that they have not done much,” said Prof Naituli.

When he fired almost his entire Cabinet, the Head of State was handed a clean slate. While the youth had consistently maintained that Ruto must resign, they were hopeful that the President would do right by them. The poaching of opposition politicians and the recycling of former Cabinet Secretaries, however, left a bitter taste in the mouths of many.

But how does a man with as much access to intelligence become so detached from reality?

Months ago, Gachagua said it was because National Intelligence Service Director General Noordin Haji was sleeping on the job, a matter that now features in the DP’s impeachment motion.

Naituli also believes the President is not getting the best advice.

“He has dishonest advisors. Some of those around him perhaps don’t want him to succeed and don’t tell him what the country feels about his government,” he said.

But Dr Owakah argues the problem was more about Ruto’s nature, saying he “advises his advisors on how to advise him.”

“Ruto thinks he is very bright. He has the Joseph Stalin kind of mindset. There is a joke going around town that if Ruto goes live on TV and says that his name is William Ruto, everyone will laugh because they will think he is lying.”

Saboti MP Caleb Amisi sought to summarise what he considers the problem with Ruto and his team.

“Kenyans are angry because of failure by the Kenya Kwanza government to fulfil any single promise, convoluted restructuring of education funding model, universal health coverage, and sale of parastatals like JKIA arbitrarily without public participation. The show off by Kenya Kwanza honchos who have amassed devilishly abnormal wealth in their short span in government is also making Kenyans angry and yearning to bring down Ruto from government,” the MP told The Standard. By Brian Otieno, The Standard

This is impeachment season. Unlike impeachments for governors, the impeachment of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua will be the first targeting the Presidency under the 2010 Constitution.

There are therefore many unknowns not tested, unlike governors’ impeachments which have been tested severally, right up to the Supreme Court. By the time Riggy G’s process is over, the constitutional provisions having implications on the matter will have been tried and tested to the furthest limits of their elasticity.

As we speak, I am aware of at least five cases before the High Court trying to stop proceedings in the National Assembly. More will be filed. The High Court should avoid granting exparte orders on any issue related to the impeachment; it should instead expedite hearings on any justiciable issues and deliver decisions on the merits within the shortest time possible. 

In any event, if we have been able to commence, try and conclude a presidential petition in 14 days, determining basic procedural questions on impeachment should not be impossible. Having said that and without going into the politics of the impeachment, the issue lawyers seem most divided about is whether the High Court has jurisdiction at all on the impeachment of the Deputy President.

The reason lawyers are divided, and like most things Kenyan the intensity of one’s view is, subject to a few exceptions, aligned with one’s politics, is that there are no direct legal provisions that address the matter. Both as a matter of general law and under the Constitution, the High Court has unlimited jurisdiction to hear all disputes except where such jurisdiction is expressly ousted by the Constitution.

The impeachment of the Deputy President is not one of the issues directly exempted from the High Court’s jurisdiction. The matter would have ended there had it not been for Article 165(3) c. This Article prohibits the High Court from hearing appeals in respect of tribunals established to determine the mental or physical capacity of the President or Deputy President to hold office. 

This process of determining capacity is provided for in Article 144 and is different from an impeachment. Article 165(3)c does not address impeachment. There are two possible interpretations as to whether jurisdiction exists and lawyers can argue themselves hoarse in either direction.

The first argument says; that the Constitution chose to oust the High Court’s jurisdiction on issues concerning the removal of the President and their Deputy from office. They do not permit the Courts to hear petitions on Presidential elections or sit in judgment over the decision of a tribunal to remove the Presidency from office for incapacity.

Based on parity, it follows that this exclusion should be read “ejusdem generis”; these processes are of the “same family” and should be treated the same. Consequently, the High Court should not entertain cases relating to removal of the President or their Deputy in whichever manner. 

The opposite side will argue with similar vehemence that makers of the Constitution were aware of the three ways in which a President and their Deputy can be removed from office. They chose to insulate two processes from the High Court and leave one out. If they had intended to oust the High Court from impeachment disputes, nothing would have been easier than to say so!

Interestingly there are numerous instances where courts have taken both approaches and justified them. No wonder they say the law is a donkey! Considering the critical importance of the matter, it is unfortunate that no one had ever sought an advisory opinion on the matter from the Supreme Court.