The MES as an emerging health financing option is a timely and indeed noble project for scaling up specialized health infrastructure, especially on the face of government fiscal constraints. The
expectation was that this project would go a long way to relief the government of the pressure to spend funds upfront for purchase of medical equipment. In turn, this would ensure that those
seeking specialized health care did not have to pay exorbitantly for medical care. However, study findings indicate that a number of factors negatively impacted overall implementation of the MES Project, leading to poor service delivery results. The design of the MES project, for example, was not informed by a comprehensive disease burden and health infrastructure needs assessment, given that counties are not homogenous. Besides, lack of transparency on the entire project with regard to the terms and conditions of the contract and poor regulation of this typical PPP project increases financial and corruption risks. This has made the project a burden to taxpayers. There is need for further evaluation and reconfiguration of the project before it lapses to ensure that citizen actually receive value for investment in terms of better health outcomes. Otherwise as the project currently stands, its contribution towards realization of UHC will be a mirage.
