Kenya

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Nearly 40 years ago, Jhpiego opened its first country office here.

  • More than 4.8 million Kenyans know their HIV status because of Jhpiego-supported HIV counseling and testing services.
  • As a result of Jhpiego’s support to family planning services, more than 1.8 million first-time users opted to start a modern contraceptive method.
  • Over 2.5 million antenatal care visits by pregnant women took place at Jhpiego-supported health care facilities, and 1.4 million deliveries were assisted by a skilled birth attendant.
  • Through Jhpiego’s projects, more than 5 million individuals in Kenya received HIV counseling and testing, newly identifying 55,060 people living with HIV and linking 52,575 of them to care and treatment. Jhpiego has supported the enrollment of more than 45,000 clients on HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (i.e., when people at high risk for HIV take HIV medicines daily to lower their chances of getting infected).

Our Work in Kenya

Over the course of this five-year project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jhpiego is working to scale up quality postpartum and post-abortion family planning services and increase uptake of contraceptive methods among postpartum and post-abortion women during the first year post-pregnancy at public primary health care centers (PHCs). In addition, Jhpiego is exploring and identifying specific interventions for private health facilities at the level of PHCs (or above) in select counties (Isiolo, Kakamega, Kwale and Makueni). In the final two years of the project, Jhpiego will foster the scale-up of postpartum and post-abortion family planning services by partnering with a local indigenous organization, Kisumu Medical and Education Trust, to lead this investment.

Advance Family Planning (AFP) is an advocacy initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health. The focus of AFP is on increasing the financial investment and political commitment needed to ensure access to high-quality, voluntary family planning. The project’s advocacy efforts are focused on the discrete policy and funding decisions critical to advancing family planning use. For more information, visit here: https://www.advancefamilyplanning.org/.

This multi-country project is catalyzing the introduction and adoption pathways for quality-assured drugs to treat postpartum hemorrhage (i.e., heat-stable carbetocin, tranexamic acid and misoprostol) through engagement and coordination with country governments and key stakeholders. The project aims to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity by making sure the right drug is in the right place at the right time for the right indication. Funded by Unitaid, AMPLI-PPHI is led by Jhpiego and supported by consortium partners PATH and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO). In addition to operating in four target countries (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Kenya and India), an additional 13 other influence countries are benefitting from country and learning exchanges as well as from the sharing of project learning, resources and tools. For more information, please visit the project website.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jhpiego is developing an ANC/PNC innovations and implementation research platform. This initiative is designed to strengthen ANC/PNC service delivery through implementation research in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Mali, and to disseminate learnings globally. The primary expected outcomes include earlier entry by pregnant women into ANC/PNC care; increased continuity of care; improved quality of care; and an improved understanding of key risk factors, vulnerabilities and morbidity/mortality outcomes. The research collective unifies multiple teams under a single collective, comprised of the following partners: Jhpiego, Harvard School of Public Health, Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS), RTI International, Christian Medical College Vellore, DAI, the World Health Organization, CARE/India and the University of Manitoba. As part of this collective, Jhpiego is: 1) conducting implementation research on innovative service delivery models and tools in three countries; 2) serving as technical advocacy lead by synthesizing data and findings across the collective to inform an evidence package; and 3) providing technical assistance, as needed, as collective partners conceptualize, design, implement and test new service delivery models. Jhpiego is also partnering with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Biostatistics Center and Department of International Health for support with statistical analysis, data management and implementation research design.

As the implementing partner responsible for leading TCI’s East Africa Accelerator Hub, Jhpiego provides technical assistance to local governments in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as they implement interventions in family planning and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health. The goal of TCI NextGen, which builds on the previous TCI initiative, is to increase access to modern contraception for urban poor women. This project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.

With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), RISE is working in select countries, including Kenya, to address the COVID-19 pandemic. In line with ministry of health priorities in each country, RISE’s COVID-19 response support may include: assisting in the planning and rollout of national vaccine plans, including ensuring health care workers are prepared to implement and monitor this plan; providing focused and clinically relevant capacity building for clinicians providing COVID-19 case management; strengthening the oxygen ecosystem; and supporting health care workers in oxygen conservation, rationalization and non-invasive respiratory care.

RISE is a five-year global project—funded by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and USAID—that works with countries to achieve a shared vision of attaining and maintaining epidemic control, with stronger local partners capable of managing and achieving results through sustainable, self-reliant and resilient health systems. The project is led by Jhpiego with the following partners: ICAP at Columbia University, Management Sciences for Health, Anova, BAO Systems, Johns Hopkins University Center for Public Health and Human Rights, and Mann Global Health. For the COVID-19 ventilator technical assistance effort, RISE is also collaborating with the University of California San Francisco, World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (via the GH STAR project), FHI 360 (via the EpiC Project) and Johns Hopkins University emergency medicine and critical care staff.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s International Vaccine Access Center and Jhpiego are conducting implementation research to inform the future delivery of new vaccines to pregnant and lactating women, specifically vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Group B Strep (GBS). The goal of this project is to develop appropriate implementation recommendations, strategies and tools to ensure demand for new RSV and GBS vaccines among pregnant and lactating women in low- and middle-income countries, and to understand the potential impact of introducing a new maternal vaccine on antenatal care services, coverage, quality and equity.

Impact Malaria is a global project of the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative to reduce mortality and morbidity caused by malaria. Implemented by a consortium of organizations led by PSI, the project is led in Kenya by Jhpiego and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. In close collaboration with Kenya’s National Malaria Control Program, other sections of the Ministry of Health and various implementing partners, Impact Malaria is designed to improve malaria service delivery via the following objectives: 1) improve the quality of and access to malaria case management and prevention of malaria in pregnancy; 2) improve the quality of and access to other malaria drug-based approaches and provide support to pilot/scale up newer malaria drug-based approaches; and 3) provide global technical leadership, support operational research and advance program learning.

With funding from Johnson & Johnson, Jhpiego is leveraging the lessons learned and strong partnerships developed under a previous project, the Obstetric Safe Surgery project, to build surgical capacity to treat obstetric fistula, establish a Fistula Center and help improve access to obstetric fistula services in Makueni County, Kenya. This project also fosters safe, high-quality respectful care, and ensures successful rehabilitation and reintegration following repair.

This four-year project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, builds on the PMA2020 project, which used innovative mobile technology to support low-cost, rapid-turnaround surveys monitoring key health and development indicators. PMA is enhancing this survey platform to generate high-quality data and ensure that governments, donors, managers and advocates use this data to make decisions regarding family planning programs. In addition to scaling up the survey platform for more widespread use, this project supports expanding it to include additional technical areas. Co-led by Jhpiego and the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, this project is operational in several African and Asian countries, including Kenya.

With support from Merck for Mothers, a Jhpiego-led consortium is working to reduce excessive bleeding after birth—also known as postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). The consortium, consisting of Jhpiego, McKinsey and Health Strat, seeks to accelerate the reduction of PPH in Kenya through strategies and innovations across the health system. These interventions are designed to increase access to uterotonics drugs, which reduce PPH, as well as to introduce heat-stable carbetocin as a uterotonic option that was recently added to the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines List. The consortium works with the government of Kenya at the national and county levels to adapt the World Health Organization’s recommendations on uterotonics and develop costed roadmaps for this effort. To guide successful implementation of these roadmaps, the consortium is conducting service delivery strengthening, supply chain strengthening, policy and advocacy, innovative financing and awareness creation/demand generation.

Jhpiego is implementing a four-year research project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to evaluate the effectiveness of delivering HIV oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) through private, brick-and-mortar pharmacies. Private retail pharmacies are more ubiquitous and feature longer opening hours, shorter wait times and greater client privacy than public health care facilities. Jhpiego is collaborating with research partners to implement, refine and assess: 1) a range of approaches related to client identification and PrEP service delivery; 2) the performance of HIV self-testing to support pharmacy PrEP delivery; and 3) the impact of various cost-sharing models on PrEP uptake. The partners are: the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology/Partners in Health Research and Development, Kenya Medical Research Institute and the University of Washington. Ultimately, this work will contribute an evidence base for policy advocacy that can bring this private pharmacy approach to scale within Kenya and globally.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jhpiego is developing a virtual care model that allows clients to access HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) through an e-pharmacy. Jhpiego is collaborating with partners to design and evaluate an end-to-end e-pharmacy PrEP delivery model that provides clients a convenient, seamless, empathetic and discreet experience of supported self-care through a single, trusted point of contact. Partners in this initiative include: MYDAWA (an e-pharmacy in Kenya that provides home delivery of products purchased online), the University of Washington, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology/Partners in Health Research and Development, and Audere (a non-profit software firm that develops diagnostic aids for self-testing of malaria, COVID-19 and influenza). Jhpiego is providing implementation support to MYDAWA on the provision of PrEP services package through MYDAWA’s online platform, as well as leading advocacy efforts to ensure alignment with government policy and to translate research findings in support of policy changes to de-medicalize PrEP delivery.