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.”

"To give birth, you have to raise a lot of money."

M-TIBA — a private sector-led solution founded by PharmAccess Foundation, Safaricom, and CarePay in 2013 — allows people to save, send, receive, and pay for health services. While it could be argued that stuffing money under a mattress or using mobile money platform M-Pesa has the same effect, with M-TIBA, once the money is transferred via phone there’s no way to withdraw it unless it’s being used to pay for services via an identification card at one of the private facilities that have applied and been approved to join M-TIBA, making it a ring-fenced fund exclusively for health needs.

M-TIBA was established in Kenya in 2015 and has since expanded to Nigeria and Tanzania. With over 3.5 million registered users in Kenya alone, it is designed to encourage the patient to put themselves in the middle of their own health care decision-making.

The secure nature of the platform — which is accessed via a menu of options that pop up once *253# is dialed — means that even if there are other demands on the household budget, it cannot be accessed.

Click the buttons to see how M-TIBA works

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Data on M-TIBA shows it is especially popular among women, said Moses Kuria, finance director of CarePay, a fintech company that developed the service. “They’d be putting in 30 cents every day because they knew even if they went home with that 30 cents, it would find a use, so that would be set aside and mostly focused on their children.”

Adding on an additional layer to the platform to specifically ring-fence funds for maternal health needs, MSD for Mothers, alongside PharmAccess Foundation, has supported the build-out of MomCare within M-TIBA to track a woman’s maternal health care journey, the costs of her care, and the health outcomes.

Over 1,990 women have used M-TIBA for maternal services, said Kuria. Many of these women would have otherwise faced a home birth, a birth without pain relief, and one that could have seen life-threatening complications.

“Before, mothers would be delivered by traditional birth attendants in the villages. These were not trained in midwifery, but they had learned through experience. Of course, they may not be able to diagnose the very complicated cases,” explained Inoti. “Those who are now able to get M-TIBA can come to Imara, and we give them affordable, accessible, quality service on time.”

For Kerubo and Ombati, it meant they could put aside shillings throughout their pregnancies, so that as their due date loomed, and even as the first pangs of a contraction rippled through their bodies, they could relax knowing they’d be able to reach a clinic with skilled birth attendants, receive necessary medication, and be tended to with the right supplies, drastically reducing their chances of dying during birth.