Kenya expands digital ID program to minors through health sector rollout

Kenya has begun a biometric registration campaign seeking to enroll children and dependents of between seven and 17 years into the national digital ID program as part of the government’s push to strengthen digital identity use in the health sector. Registering people for the Maisha Namba early in life and offering improved healthcare as an incentive could also drive increased adoption of the system.

The country’s Health Cabinet Secretary, Aden Duale, said in a post on X that the initiative is under the Social Health Authority (SHA) system and aims to establish a “secure link for each child to their health record, eliminating duplicate registrations and misidentifications.”

Kenya has had a back-and-forth experience in the last few years with adult biometrics for health care insurance. In 2024, the government said it had lost more than one hundred million US dollars over many months due to insurance related-fraud, in some cases aided and abetted by stolen biometrics.

The ongoing biometric enrollment drive is to make sure each dependent is issued a Maisha Namba digital ID, which the Health Secretary said, will make it possible for every child’s “medical history, immunization logs, and treatment records” to be “accessible at any SHA facility, allowing medical workers to make faster.”

According to the official, integrating children’s digital ID with health records will not only ensure efficiency in managing their medical profiles, but also lead to reduced fraud.

The move comes as there’s been a strong global push for the use of biometrics-based digital ID systems for patient identification and general healthcare delivery. Executives of digital ID firm Imprivata have made this case on several occasions, with the company’s senior vice president of customer strategy Sean Kelly projecting two years ago that “facial biometrics will play a crucial role in reducing the risks of patient misidentification and improving the overall quality of care in healthcare organizations.”

Without a reliable way to tie a patient to their records, health systems sometimes end up treating strangers, duplicating tests, missing allergies, or even losing huge sums of money to fraud. Experts say digital ID easily closes that gap by anchoring every patient to a single, verified identity.

Apart from Kenya, other countries such as Ethiopia have also tied their national ID systems to the health sector.

Countries like Ghana and Tanzania have seen biometric patient identification trials aimed at reducing duplicate records and improving care continuity in hard-to-reach areas, through Simprints biometrics-powered initiatives.

Japan, meanwhile, is also pushing its My Number ID card as a health insurance credential, with tens of millions of citizens enrolled, though uptake for actual health transactions has been slower than the government hoped.

Kenya’s Health Secretary emphasized that “biometric verification enhances institutional security, significantly enhancing benefit misuse and ensuring resources go to legitimate beneficiaries.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  children  |  digital ID  |  healthcare  |  identity management  |  Kenya  |  Maisha Namba  |  patient identification