Listen Over 40 years ago in 1978, the world was still as unequal as it is today. There was a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the majority could not access basic services including in health. On September 6-12 of that year, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, […]
Listen In the past couple of years, Kenya has seen a U-turn – from people suffering and losing life to communicable diseases to an increase in non-communicable diseases. Dubbed lifestyle diseases and stereotypically seen as ailments of the poor and the old, NCDs include diabetes, cancers, cardiovascular (including heart diseases and stroke) and respiratory infections. […]
Listen In rural areas and informal settlements – mainly slums in cities and towns – people hardly seek health services. There are myriad reasons for this, including long distances to health centres, indifference to health-seeking behaviour and cost factors. But most of these places are served by community members known as Community Health Volunteers (CHVs), […]
Listen Shortly after President Kenyatta announced his Big Four Agenda, with an emphasis on UHC, many people were unsure about it. Some thought UHC meant free medical services regardless of one’s background, status, education or place of residence. Others thought it meant every Kenyan must be insured, while others interpreted UHC to mean well-equipped hospitals, […]
Listen “How do we ensure that Universal Health Coverage is possible in Kenya by 2022? The answer is simple,” so wrote Dr Werner Schultink, the Unicef Representative to Kenya, Dr Rudi Eggers, WHO Representative to Kenya, and Mr Siddharth Chatterjee, the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya. “The focus has to be on preventable and primary healthcare […]
Listen As already seen, Kenya is a signatory to the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 and several others, including the Bamako Initiative of 1988, and the Millennium Development Goals of 2000, and now the SDGs and the Astana Declaration. It is in 2005 that Kenya moved from a concentration on the disease burden to the promotion […]