Kenya Country Profile
Jhpiego in Kenya
Quick Facts
Estimated total population:1
44.3 million
Maternal mortality ratio:2
360 per 100,000 live births
Infant mortality rate:2
49 per 1,000 live births
Under-five mortality rate:2
73 per 1,000 live births
Total fertility rate:1
3.9
Contraceptive prevalence:1
58% (all methods)
53% (modern methods)
HIV prevalence:3
6.1%
Births with skilled provider:2
43.8%
Sources:
1 Population Reference Bureau
2015 World Population Data
Sheet;
2 Kenya statistics on UNICEF
website;
3 UNAIDS 2013 Report on the
Global AIDS Epidemic.
Background
With one of the largest populations in sub-Saharan Africa, and estimates that the
population will increase by another 13 million by 2025, Kenya faces profound
environmental challenges due to high population growth, with subsequent risks to
the population’s overall health status. Although life expectancy (at 62 years) is
relatively high for the region, there remains room for progress in improving
maternal mortality and infant mortality. UNAIDS estimates that 1.2 million
Kenyan children and adults are living with HIV/AIDS. One consequence of HIV
in Kenya is the increased prevalence of tuberculosis (334 per 100,000). Malaria is
also an issue, accounting for 13.6% of deaths among children under five.
Kenya is one of the first countries where Jhpiego worked. In 1979, a regional
training center for reproductive health (RH) was established under the auspices
of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Nairobi,
where hundreds of Kenyan and regional nurses and physicians were trained in
RH. This was followed by a series of programs designed to increase national
capacity to deliver high-quality RH and other health services. Examples of
Jhpiego’s groundbreaking programs in Kenya include: 1) helping establish
minilaparotomy training at 14 teaching hospitals, beginning in 1987;
2) bringing malaria prevention and treatment to pregnant women, started in
1999; 3) integrating family planning (FP) services with HIV services, 2003
onwards; and 4) training community health workers, in 2008, to provide
Depo-Provera within their communities.
Since establishing an office in Nairobi in the early 1990s, Jhpiego has expanded
its presence nationwide with 13 field offices and on-ground activities in
24 counties. Jhpiego responds to a broad range of national health needs by
providing technical leadership and expertise in areas ranging from FP/RH to
maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH), and from malaria to HIV/AIDS
and tuberculosis. Jhpiego is well-known in Kenya for strengthening existing
systems for efficiency and sustainability. The organization is working across the
board to:
 Improve service delivery through various low-cost innovations: Jhpiego has
developed the award-winning single visit approach to cervical cancer
screening and treatment and an innovative model to offer safe medical male
circumcision through community outreach.
 Build clinical skills among health care workers: since 1996, Jhpiego-led
programs have enabled the Government of Kenya to train more than
4,000 health workers to offer a full range of contraceptive methods.
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Improve health conditions at the community level: across its programs,
Jhpiego has empowered over 11,000 community health volunteers to make a
measurable impact in their communities through targeted referral and
defaulter tracing.
Develop policies and make them operational: Jhpiego-led programs have
assisted the government to develop full policy packages for prevention of
mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) and malaria in pregnancy,
as well as to add rotavirus to the vaccination schedule.
Other innovations developed or expanded in Kenya include: 1) the design and
use of tow-along “Health Wagons” to bring services to the people; 2) all-method
RH camps integrated with nutrition, child vaccination, etc.; and 3) the
establishment of an immediate postpartum IUD program.
By working in a broad range of technical areas at all levels of the Kenyan health
care system—at the national Ministry of Health (MOH) level, the county,
health facility and community levels—Jhpiego is able to ensure synergies across
its programs to leverage donor resources and ensure enhanced benefits for
Kenyan women and families. In Kenya, Jhpiego has a variety of funding sources,
including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, AstraZeneca and other foundations and corporations.
Current Programs and Accomplishments
APHIAplus Zone 4 (APHIAplus KAMILI)
This five-year, $100 million, USAID-funded project is aimed at strengthening
primary care health services in 11 counties in Eastern and Central Kenya. The
project works in 1,063 health facilities and is implemented by a consortium of
10 partners, of which Jhpiego is the lead. Accomplishments include:
 PMTCT: Provided HTC to about 359,484 pregnant women and ARV
prophylaxis to around 10,806 HIV-positive women and their exposed
infants. Currently, more than 159 health facilities are now providing
HAART for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
 HIV care and treatment: 1,076,078 clients tested for HIV; support for
279,338 clients currently on ART, with a 12-month retention rate of 83%.
 Child health: 77% of the targeted children have been fully immunized..
APHIAplus Zone 1 (APHIAplus Western Kenya)
Jhpiego is working on this project as a sub-grantee to the prime, PATH. This
five-year, USAID-funded project is aimed at strengthening delivery of integrated
primary health services in Western Kenya, including HIV testing and
counseling; maternal, newborn and child health; and voluntary medical male
circumcision (VMMC) services. Accomplishments include:
 Family planning: couple years of protection in Western Kenya rose to
1,165,249 in four years, thereby averting 335,591 unintended pregnancies.
 VMMC: 145,991 clients have accessed VMMC services, averting more than
29,000 new HIV infections.
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Child health: the proportion of deliveries with skilled birth attendants in
Western Region increased from 32% to 61%.
Maternal health: the proportion of pregnant women attending at least four
antenatal care visits in Nyanza Region increased from 38% to 54%.
The Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP)
MCSP is a five-year, USAID-funded project that is introducing and supporting
high-impact health interventions with the ultimate goal of ending preventable child
and maternal deaths within a generation. MCSP is strengthening the core capacities
of county governments and health teams to increase coverage and utilization of
evidence-based, sustainable, high-impact interventions for reproductive, maternal,
newborn and child health; nutrition; and water and sanitation.
The Kenya Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (Tupange)
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Tupange seeks to accelerate
uptake of FP services among the urban poor in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu.
Accomplishments include:
 Tupange’s work with government advocates resulted in the implementation
of the award-winning Population Policy aimed at improving the quality life
for the people of Kenya by managing population to a level that can be
sustained with the available resources.
 Tupange’s innovative SMS commodity tracking has been extremely effective
in ensuring uninterrupted availability of the essential commodities at the
health centers and clinics.
 Tupange has packaged its experiences and best practices in the form of an
online toolkit, which can be adapted to the context of locally available
resources.
Brighter Future
This two-year grant from Merck & Co. is addressing unmet need for
contraception among university-age women and helping them develop
confidence to build strong, purposeful futures. Accomplishments include:
 After one year of low-cost activities, the percentage of sexually active students
at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology using a modern
contraceptive method increased from 52% in 2013 to 72% in 2015.
 A survey of 679 students at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and
Technology (March 2015) revealed that 80.4% of female students saw at
least one component of the Brighter Future/Fuguo project. A total of 50% of
these girls revealed that they had learned things they didn’t know about
contraception.
 63% of students who had talked with Brighter Future peer educators revealed
that after talking with a peer educator they had initiated a discussion about
contraception with their partner.
The Heart Program
Funded by AstraZeneca, the Heart Program is empowering health care
providers, community health workers and communities with the protocols, tools,
information, training and systems they need to effectively address the
prevention, treatment and control of hypertension.
School children in urban slum, Nairobi,
Kenya.
Accomplishments include:
 Over 300,000 clients were reached with messages about risk factors associated with hypertension.
 Over 230,000 clients have been able to access screening services.
 Over 30,000 clients were referred for treatment; out of these, 50% have accessed treatment.
Advance Family Planning (AFP2)
This project builds on the success of the preceding AFP Project to advocate for an increase in political will to invest in
high-quality FP programs. Accomplishments include:
 In 2012, the MOH approved a policy that allows community-based distributors to provide injectable contraceptives.
 Four county governments have developed five-year, costed FP strategic plans.
 A national FP advocacy technical working group was established to spearhead collective advocacy initiatives.
Waterloo Project
Funded by the Waterloo Foundation, the Waterloo Project works to improve the
health of the population of Korogocho, Mathare and Viwandani informal
settlements by: 1) addressing water and sanitation issues; 2) enhancing knowledge of
RH among children attending schools; and 3) strengthening FP services.
Accomplishments include:
 Every phase of the Waterloo/Jhpiego partnership has included a focus on how to
assist the communities to create income while improving their health.
 Special community cleanup days organized under this project resulted in youth
groups raising up to $85 a month from garbage collection.
 Waterloo has enabled the development of community-owned maps that
geographically identify the status of the focus health issues in the different
locations in the community.
Mother and baby meet with a health
care worker, Embu, Kenya.
Accelerating Scale-up of Implants (ASI)
This multi-country initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks to fast track efforts to introduce and
strengthen high-quality FP services in selected countries (including Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia) in order to scale up use of
contraceptive implants more widely and at a reduced cost. ASI promotes and builds capacity on a wide range of FP methods
to achieve a healthy method mix within the FP legislative guidelines that promote voluntarism and informed choice.
Partners and Donors
In addition to maintaining collaborative relationships with its donors in Kenya (USAID, CDC, the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, Merck & Co., AstraZeneca, Waterloo and Becton Dickinson), Jhpiego works closely with the MOH
(at national, county, local and health facility levels), other ministries and local governments, communities, and international
and national nongovernmental organizations.
References
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). 2013 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic.
Population Reference Bureau. 2015 World Population Data Sheet, Washington, D.C.
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) website. Kenya statistics accessed at:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/kenya_statistics.html#120.
U.S. Department of State website. Kenya country profile accessed at: http://www.state.gov/p/af/ci/ke/.