Providing Palliative Care in Kenya

by Indiana Institute for Global Health, Inc.

Project Report | Jun 16, 2022
Students Making a Difference!

By Kenneth Cornetta | Project Leader

zebra

Hello All!

I’ve been back in the US for four months now after an incredible five month visit to Eldoret. First, I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Hussein Elias and the palliative care team for all they continue to do to advance palliative care and help patients in need.

Our clinical officer students are now halfway through their 18 month training program. We hoped by embedding them in the various clinical services (medicine, surgery, and pediatrics), the students would obtain important medical knowledge. An unanticipated outcome was improved access to palliative care services that have resulted from providing the healthcare teams with a team member specifically focused on patient quality of life. Many more patients are having their symptoms managed by our students with oversight by Dr. Elias and the MTRH Palliative Care team.

We hope that the program we established for training clinical officers can be a model for others. Dr. Elias is the lead author on our recent paper describing our journey in developing the training program. This work is published in the ASCO Journal of Global Oncology. It is an open access journal, so you can view the paper for free by going to the link attached to this report.

Second, I would like to give special thanks to Drs. Clarissa Johnston and Colleen Brown, along with two wonderful palliative care physicians-in-training, Leigh Anderson and Hussain Rangoonwala, who were all in Eldoret helping Dr. Elias and the team provide clinical care and education. Their efforts are greatly appreciated.

Finally, our efforts to develop a Palliative Medicine board-certification fellowship program for physicians continues to make its way through Moi University committees. It’s almost over the finish line. This is an area where we could use financial support. In contrast to the US where fellowship programs are free and provide a stipend to physicians-in-training, physicians in Kenya are not paid during the training period and they are also responsible for tuition. The cost per physician is estimated at $8,000 for the two year training period. We hope to train four physicians starting this fall. The meaningful impact our clinical officer training program is having has been apparent, and we know that training physicians will also be a game changer for those in need of specialized medical Palliative Care in Kenya. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated and have an immense impact on the community.

Please be well and take care of each other!

Ken

Links:

Elias et al. ASCO Journal of Global Oncology manuscript

Permalink

Feb 22, 2022
Creating Board Certified Health Care Workers

By Kenneth Cornetta | Project Leader

flower pic

Jambo !

I just returned from Eldoret after five months as part of a Fulbright Scholars program. It was an incredible experience and I am very appreciative of the warm welcome from the members of the Family Medicine Department at Moi University. They have shown incredible dedication to advancing Palliative Medicine in Kenya.

The most exciting news is the Higher Diploma course for Clinical Officers which is in full swing. We have seven bright and dedicated students who began the course in October. They are now rotating through the various clinical services which will comprise the majority of their 18 month training. Drs. Hussein Elias and Solomon Sindano and the palliative care team are doing much of the clinical teaching, and a number of palliative care specialists living in Kenya and the US are providing virtual lectures. The students have faced a number of challenging cases and I was impressed on the thoughtful way they considered how best to help their patients. Before I left Kenya we all went out to lunch. They clearly have a good sense of humor and like all students I know, a very hardy appetite.

A major goal for my Fulbright was to help the Family Medicine Department develop a curriculum for physicians wishing to become specialists in Palliative Medicine. This will be a two year fellowship with the majority of time spent in direct patient care. The curriculum has undergone initial review at the Moi School of Medicine and will now go up the chain including reviews by Kenyan accreditation bodies. This curriculum will be the first board certified Palliative Medicine program in Kenya and aligns with the recently released Ministry of Health ten-year plan for improving palliative care.

The challenge for the initial program will be finding students who can afford to participate. Unlike the US, where fellowships are paid positions, specialty training in Kenya requires the trainee to pay tuition. Moreover, the fellowship is full-time so the physicians will not be earning income during their training. For the two year program, each fellows is expected to pay 8,000 US dollars in tuition. The goal for our first class will be 4 fellows, and we are hoping to raise funds to provide scholarships that cover the majority of the tuition. We were able to provide partial support for the clinical officers in our Higher Diploma course, and it will be important to assist our physician trainees as well. A number of physicians in Kenya have already expressed interest and we hope, with help from individuals like yourselves, we will have our first class enrolled by January 2023.

While national and international agencies are advocating for palliative care, only by training health care workers will we improve the quality of life for those with life-limiting illness. We need your help in helping train physician specialists and any support you can provide to further this new effort is always greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Ken

Permalink

Nov 1, 2021
Tipping Point Leans Our Way

By Ken Cornetta | Project Leader

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... 11 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.