Healthcare in Kenya

Kenya's health care system is structured in a step-wise manner so that complicated cases are referred to a higher level.

They provide outpatient services for simple ailments such as common cold and flu, uncomplicated malaria and skin conditions.

[citation needed] All government health centres have a clinical officer as the in-charge and provide comprehensive primary care.

Because of their heavy focus on preventive care such as childhood vaccination, rather than curative services, local council (municipal) and most mission, as well as many private health centres, do not have clinical officers but instead have a nurse as the in-charge.

The health centre has the following departments: These are owned privately by individuals or churches and offer services roughly similar to those available at a sub-district or district hospital.

These are similar to health centres with addition of a surgery unit for Caeserian section and other procedures.

Each sub-county, formerly district in the country, has a subcounty hospital, which is the co-ordinating and referral centre for the smaller units.

In Kenya the number of midwives per 100,000 live births is unavailable and the lifetime risk of death for pregnant women is 1 in 380.

The centralized governance was plagued by political and economic dis-empowerment and unequal distribution of resources.

Preventive services include routine childhood immunizations and environmental activities to control mosquito breeding which in turn reduce malaria transmission.

Some of key objectives that are set for governance systems at the county levels include: In Kenya, the primary sources of funding for healthcare are:[20] The health service delivery function was formally transferred to counties on 9 August 2013, and one-third of the total devolved budget of KSh.210 billion/= (US$2 billion) was earmarked for health in the 2013/2014 budget following the transfer.

The Kenya Medical Research Institute was reduced to KSh.1.7 billion/= from KSh1.9 billion/= and the National Aids Control Council was cut to KSh.600 million/= from KSh.900 million/= and the slum health programme to KSh.700 million/= from KSh.1 billion/=.