Kenya
Kenyan health services in need of reform

afrol.com, 4 September - Kenyan health services have deteriorated during the decades, available statistics document. Less money is spent in health per capita, infant mortality increases and life expectancy falls. The ongoing drought is only making bad worse. A decentralizing reform and foreign aid is hoped to patch up the situation. 

The Swedish development cooperation, SIDA, today informed that it will support the Kenyan government in its efforts to strengthen its decaying health services. The support is mainly to be channeled through local agencies and aims at capacity and institution building, and being able to increase services given. Main beneficiaries will be women and children.

Kenya has witnessed an economic stagnation during the last years. Health services have decreased, population keeps growing fast and the costs of the spreading AIDS epidemic has a significant effect on the limited health resources available in the country. Today, government spends some US$ 6 on health care per capita, while this number was US$ 10 per capita twenty years ago. Other statistics show that infant and mother mortality has increased, while the life expectancy of a Kenyan has fallen during the last five years. 

Kenyan social statistics are in general disturbing lecture: Seven of thousand mothers die while giving birth in Kenya. Nine of a hundred children die within a year after birth. There is only one doctor for every 7000 persons in Kenya.

Further, the ongoing heavy drought produces big problems in accessing to clean water, both for Kenyans and for their health institutions. Under normal conditions, some 47% of Kenyans do not have access to potable water. The drought also causes severe and acute problems of malnutrition. In August, the World Food Organisation reported that 25 to 30 per cent of children in some districts now suffer from malnutrition. This is two to three times the average rate of malnutrition compared to other developing countries.

SIDA has decided to contribute some US$ 9 million to regional projects focusing on HIV and AIDS, medical counseling, institution building, children health care, vaccinations, preventing malaria and common Swedish-Kenyan medical research.

- There is a great need to bring the decision making process out to a local level, with a local participation, says Ylva Sörman Nath from SIDA. The ongoing reform process in the national health services helps realizing this and helps channeling resources directly to the place they are needed. On a local level, there is in particular need for assistance in policy making and institution building. NGOs and the civil society will be involved.

Kenyan government has taken the initiative to reform its lame health services. As resources are very limited, they need to be used in a more efficient way. Local and regional institutions need more competence in managing their own units and build on the institutions they have. The legal framework must be more flexible and give more authorities to local units. It is hoped that these ongoing reforms will channel more of the resources directly to where they are needed.

A special focus is given to the Lake Victoria Initiative, and districts in this region will be main beneficiaries of SIDA's push. The Lake Victoria Initiative is a long term cooperation of regions in the different countries bordering the lake (Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya). 

Source: Based on SIDA

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