Providing Palliative Care in Kenya

Hi All! 

One of the important ways we can try and bring palliative care services to the very rural areas of Kenya is to support healthcare works in these remote areas. For over 3 years now, our research coordinator Sarah Nyariki RN and Dr. Hussein Elias have been conducting a monthly Project ECHO program. 

If you are not familiar with Project ECHO, it stands for Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes and was started by the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center to link specialty care physicians with primary care providers. The AMPATH Palliative Care ECHO program is a virtual platform that is free for participants. A typical meeting is one hour that is divided into a didactic lecture by a subject matter expert, followed by a difficult case presentation by a healthcare worker in the community. A panel of experts attend the meeting to help answer questions brought by the presenter and other community healthcare workers.

Sarah and Hussein have been collecting data on the number and general satisfaction of the participants. In the first year we had 446 unique participants and by year 3 it has grown to over 600. Initial participants were from Western Kenya but we now have attendees from throughout Kenya and an increasing number of international participants. Most participants are nurses and clinical officers. We are happy to report that a report of our findings was just accepted for publication in the African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine. Congratulations Sarah and Hussein!

While we continue to improve access to palliative care, our program like many others is facing challenges. We had hoped to submit to the US NIH to support our research programs in palliative care and in sickle cell disease, but the long-standing system for support is being revised. We hope clarity will be provided next month so we can submit our grant proposals.

More than ever, we greatly appreciate any support you can provide!

Take care,

Ken