Persons With Disabilities in Mombasa County will now enjoy free medical assessment services.
This is after governor Abdulswamad Nassir scrapped all medical assessment fees charged in a bid to ensure persons with disabilities access health promotion, prevention, screening, rehabilitation, and other mainstream and specialist health service in the County.
Speaking at Tononoka hall in Mvita constituency, during an exercise to register persons with autism in the county, Nassir also ordered for immediate mapping of all persons with disability among them children with autism within Mombasa County so that they can benefit from cash transfer programs among other services.
“Money that people with disabilities pay to get medical assessment will be free from now on, we will hold meetings with my cabinet to tell them the importance of mapping up all children with disabilities so that they can reap benefits from the county,” the governor stated.
Nassir said after the mapping the county will now roll out a comprehensive medical cover of the National insurance fund NHIF to over 10,000 persons in Mombasa with priority given to persons with disability.
He said immediately after Ramadhan, his administration will start giving universal health care coverage to over 10,000 families, among them children coming from poor backgrounds, orphans, widows, and widowers with disabilities.
According to a story obtained by Kenya News Agency, Nassir was responding to a disturbing story by Mombasa county (NCPWD) coordinator Juliet Ruwa, who decried that persons with autism have continued to bear the brunt of marginalization in health, education, and development due to lack of registration cards.
Ruwa said registration of persons with disability in Mombasa will highlight the nature of their disability, it will also ease the burden of addressing their plight and needs without victimization.