Kenya, through the current government, has decided to implement an ambitious programme, described by many as controversial, with fears that it will harm the poorer classes.
This is the ‘universal health coverage’ (UHC), which saw its first step with the official launch of the Social Health Authority (SHA) last October 2024.
The SHA, effectively replaces the historic ‘National Hospital Insurance Fund’ (NHIF), with the aim of providing accessible, affordable and quality health services to all Kenyans.
In practice a compulsory social health insurance for all.
A kind of health insurance in which some services will be prepaid and others free. The problem is that the full package of benefits for the SHA has been finalised, even though the current government funding covers only 4% of the total estimated costs.
The Ministry of Health itself has admitted that the government has allocated 6.1 billion shillings for the SHA, which is only a very small part of the 168 billion needed for full functionality.
It is still unclear where the funding needed to complete this programme, which was one of Ruto's election campaign highlights in 2022, will come from.
The delay in implementation, which was scheduled for the end of this year, will surely also lengthen the timeframe of another of the government's proposals, that of making tourists entering the country subject to compulsory state insurance. 
Already postponed last year, this initiative, which, for example, is now coming into force in Zanzibar in Tanzania, will eventually, by European standards and those of most of the civilised world, become just a tax. This is mainly because almost all travellers now take out private insurance policies that also offer repatriation and treatment in first-class hospitals. 
In any case, it will almost certainly not come into force even in early 2025.

Let us see in detail what the SHA is
Kenya's Social Health Authority (SHA) was established to manage social health insurance in the country. The SHA has three funds: the Primary Health Care Fund, the Social Health Insurance Fund and the Emergency, Chronic and Critical Illness Fund.
There will be packages with different offers, depending on the services that can be provided, from outpatient to inpatient care, from maternity to mental problems, from surgery to dental care, from ambulance services to emergencies. As for prices, for example, the rate for a normal delivery and essential neonatal care is Kes. 10.000.
The fact remains that most Kenyans do not have that kind of money and so many are so far away from the hospital facilities that they have to think about saving money for transport first.
But so be it. Any attempt to improve the public health sector is welcome, but will it be possible to find funding to improve services, trusting that then the obligation on citizens to take out even minimal health insurance will not simply pass as one of the many imaginative and creative taxes?