Skilled deliveries in Kakamega County have improved from 33% to 67% with neonatal and maternal mortality reducing significantly. This is after the County government of Kakamega introduced the ‘Imarisha Afya ya Mama na Mtoto program’ that gives incentives and help to needy mothers in support for the growth of healthy children.
This has been revealed by the County Executive in charge of Health in Kakamega County Penina Mukabane, who says that they have plans of increasing the benefiting facilities from two to four in each sub-county to reach more residents.
“There are two facilities in each sub county where residents can access the Oparanya care services, but as a Ministry, we are working on establishing 24 more facilities since we have seen the impact the programme has to the residents,” said Mrs Mukabane.
She added that the Ministry faces challenges where a number of qualifying beneficiaries lack identity cards for registration, others lack phones to receive the funds while others end up registering in a number of facilities at ago but said that her department is working on them for accountability.
The program that kicked off three years ago now benefits a total of 28,000 mothers, with about 5,000 looking forward to joining after the verification process is done.
A mother who qualifies in the programme receives 2000 shillings a month for 2 years to support in the feeding and welfare of the child.
