A 2024 World Economic Forum report reveals startling data on women’s health. According to the report, 25 per cent of women spend 25 per cent more time in poor heath than men. Simply put, more women spend their valuable time dealing with poor health instead of contributing to nation building.
The report argues that addressing women’s health gap could generate the equivalent impact of 137 million women accessing full-time positions by 2040 and makes the case that this would boost the global economy by $1 trillion annually – a 1.7 per cent increase in per capita gross domestic product.
Early this year I had the honour of being appointed to serve on the board of the World Economic Forum Global Alliance for Women's Health. This appointment gives me a unique platform to elevate health issues, especially those facing women on the African continent. However, it has also given me another opportunity to reflect on our local situation.
Kenya has prioritised Universal Health Coverage and investment in primary health care as the vehicle for advancing health equity and ensuring that no open is left behind. While we scale up these efforts, it is important to keep an eye on health disparities underpinned by gender inequalities as a key barrier.
Data shows that Kenyan women carry a disproportionately bigger health burden with maternal deaths, HIV, cancer and malaria among some of the leading health challenges. The current maternal mortality stands at 355 deaths per 100,000 live births, which the global average. Twice as many women (4.9 per cent) are living with HIV than men (2.4 per cent).
Maternal mortality and morbidity (which refers to any short or long-term health complications arising from pregnancy and childbirth, that can lead to death) has been declining over the past one decade from a high of 488, according to the Kenya demographic Survey of 2009 to 355 in the 2019 census. However, majority of these deaths are preventable as they are a result of poor access to quality healthcare services.
To address these issues, we must work together as a country to re-engineer our healthcare and shift our investment from curative to promotive and preventive. Indeed, the government of President William Ruto has made this shift a key priority as part of our push towards realisation of universal health coverage.
Access to family planning and increasing use of contraceptives to address unplanned pregnancies has been a key focus of the ministry’s efforts to reduce maternal deaths. Indeed, investment in this area has seen an increase in contraceptive prevalence rates from 39 per cent in 2009 to 58 per cent in 2022. The ministry’s target is to raise the contraceptive prevalence rate to 62 per cent by 2030.
Under UHC 2020-2030 strategy, one of the key targets is to expand the population covered by health services with a focus on the underserved, marginalised and vulnerable populations. I firmly believe that women and girls are one of the vulnerable groups that we must deliberately target, especially those in the rural areas where uptake of healthcare services is still low.
In September last year, the President launched a workforce of 100,000 dedicated community health promoters, each equipped with essential knowledge and tools and that are now deployed to pivotal role in implementing the community health strategy, essential for realising primary healthcare goals.
A major driving force to realisation of UHC is adequate financing of our healthcare and directing resources to where they are most needed, at the primary healthcare level. To address this the government has made the rollout of the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) and the establishment of the Social Health Authority a key deliverable for my ministry.
Under the current National Health Insurance Fund arrangement, many women are not covered largely because they cannot afford the premiums required. A major advantage of SHIF is that it provides comprehensive medical coverage from the primary healthcare leave and extend benefits covering beneficiaries who have exhausted their covers.
Whereas these government-led policy efforts are critical in setting the pace at policy level, I strongly believe in building strong partnerships. For example, as a way of appreciating the unique needs of women, the public and private sectors must work together to develop and advance innovations that specifically target addressing women’s health issues.
The World Health Organization has underscored the need to promote gender equality in health with calls to countries to mainstream gender in health through the development of gender-responsive health policies. Beyond such policies there is need to implement programmes to strengthen health sector response to gender-based violence, address gender equality in health workforce development, as well as gender-related barriers to health services.
It is a fact that when women thrive communities thrive and our own statistics and those from the World Economic Forum show that a major obstacle to women’s progress is their poor state of health and therefore investing in women’s health has a direct contribution to women’s economic empowerment. As a government this is what we are committed to doing.
Health Cabinet Secretary