A Solution to the Cost of Giving Life in Kenya
Client: Devex
Cinematography & Photography: Katie G. Nelson
How is a health financing platform helping to ensure every woman gives birth with the care, resources, and treatment she needs?
From Nairobi, Devex takes a look.
Living a few minutes away from the Imara Health Care Center in a house built of corrugated iron, Edinah Kemunto Ombati, 26, described her first delivery, with her daughter Birha, as painful and scary.
Sitting in front of the curtain that divides the one-room house into living and sleeping quarters, she explained that in the months and weeks prior to giving birth — anticipating the potentially precarious situation that lay at the nine-month mark — she and her partner did their best to find the 3,600 shillings ($36) it would cost to provide her with the essential care she’d need during labor. They begged from friends and family, but it was not enough.
Although she endured extreme pain, Ombati survived, and her second time around was an altogether different experience.
“[To give] birth, you have to raise a lot of money, but now it is covered," she said, putting her second and much improved delivery down to health financing platform M-TIBA.
“Now my family is covered and I have no worries.”