President William Ruto has defended his administration's Linda Jamii maternal health cover, saying his predecessor’s Linda Mama programme was non-inclusive and marred by administrative hitches.
On Tuesday, Dr Ruto said that although the Linda Mama programme, a pet project of the Jubilee administration under former president Uhuru Kenyatta, was good for the country, the current Linda Jamii programme is better because it offers enhanced benefits and covers more people.
He spoke in Kajiado in response to Mr Kenyatta’s recent claims that Dr Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza administration had rolled back the gains made by Linda Mama by scrapping the programme, which he said significantly improved the quality of maternal care.
“To defend him (Uhuru), we should be a bit magnanimous to him. The Linda Mama programme was great for the country. We developed it under the Jubilee administration under the leadership President Uhuru. We learned a lot from the programme and because of the lessons learned, we designed the Linda Jamii Programme,” Dr Ruto said.
He spoke at Umma University during the launch of the institution's new administration complex and groundbreaking for the School of Engineering Phase II.
“It (Linda Jamii) is an improvement of the Linda Mama programme. So, Linda Mama was good, Linda Jamii is obviously better,” he said.
“Linda Jamii is better in terms of scope, from just delivery of mothers that was the primary target of the Linda mama. We have now improved it to cover prenatal, mother’s delivery, postnatal; and it no longer targets mothers but the entire family with digits doubling in terms of benefits.”
Introduced in October 2016, the Linda Mama cover was an expansion of the Free Maternity Services (FMS) programme that had been introduced in June 2013.
The programme provided free maternal health care services to expectant women, which included antenatal care, delivery, postnatal care, and three months of care for the newborn.
A protester on July 16, 2024 carries a placard urging President William Ruto to return the Linda Mama Programme.
Photo credit: File | Nation
On the other hand, the Linda Jamii programme covers the expectant mother, the husband, and other children, and covers antenatal care, delivery, postnatal care, and essential newborn services.
It also offers packages for intensive Care Unit (ICU) and High Dependency Unit (HDU) services for both the mother and the infant in case of complications, and Anti-D serum treatment— a critical intervention for Rhesus-negative mothers to prevent complications in future pregnancies.
Dr Ruto addressed the issue after Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale mounted a scathing attack on Mr Kenyatta terming him a “naysayer”.
Kenya Kwanza, CS Duale claimed, had inherited fictitious debts amounting to Sh30 billion from the defunct National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) under which Linda Mama operated.
“The Kenya Kwanza administration has not scrapped the Linda Mama programme but enhanced it. Our former boss (Uhuru Kenyatta) should be grateful. He left us with Sh30 billion fictitious debts trickling down to Sh5.6 billion under the Linda Mama programme,” he said.
He defended Linda Jamii, terming it as a health transformative agenda by the President Ruto administration.
“The retired President Uhuru should tell us why the maternal mortality was high during his administration if the Linda Mama was as good as he purports. We still have 20 counties where maternal mortality is high,” he said.
The minister said 26.5 million Kenyans had registered with the Social Health Authority (SHA) since its inception, compared to seven million Kenyans under NHIF.
“In the past nine months the government has mobilised Sh70 billion, four times what NHIF could mobilise in many years.”
On Education, President Ruto said his administration had made tremendous enhancement on university education funding to Sh130 billion in the last three years that has since prompted fee reductions to a maximum of Sh75,000 per semester.
He further defended the electronic government procurement plan rolled by the Treasury, saying it would reduce government expenditure by 40 percent once fully implemented. The Head of State criticised those opposing it.
“We will continue to make sure that integrity will not be compromised in matters of financial management. That is the reason we are changing our procurement policies. We are not backtracking on EGP despite opposition from brokers and profiteering individuals who have been siphoning public resources,” he said
Umma University Chancellor Abas Gullet said the institution has grown in the last seven years, with development partners injecting Sh14 billion to provide a learning opportunity to at least 15,000 students in different courses. The Kajiado campus was founded in 2013.
Kajiado Governor Joseph ole Lenku praised the institution for offering sponsorship to poor students from the Maa community, cementing the institution's partnership with locals.
