The health regulation and quality standards committee, of Kenya Healthcare Federation, held it’s first quarterly meeting for the year 2019, on 16th March 2019, at KHF offices, to outline 2019 focus areas. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Elizabeth Wala, federation vice chair, and the director representative for the committee. In her opening remarks, Dr. Wala reiterated that 2019 focus areas on regulations to be key in the Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC)agenda. She noted that the Health Act and its implementation process was very slow in 2018, because it was overtaken by the UHC agenda and the supply chain concerns. In addition, she noted that efforts towards quality in 2018 focused more on the Kenya Quality Model for Health (KQMH) as a framework, yet other existing models that could be applicable in the health sector. She concluded by saying that this year this committee must set three achievable focus areas.
It was agreed that given that the Ministry of Health (MOH) is substantially mandated with the regulatory role, the committee should seek the ministerial input through the Ministerial Stakeholder Forum (MSF) meetings. Through the Business Advocacy Fund () grant, the committee agreed that prevailing challenges on quality and accreditation would be added to the BAF fund as key focus areas in advocacy. The committee’s key focus areas in 2019 include:Drafting a position paper on private sector’s position on Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC)(This will ensure that the quality component is well defined implemented in UHC), rolling out of the KQMH, advocating on Kenya Accreditation Service (KENAS) accreditation process and spread the communication on Health Act Implementation.