Mobile Clinics for Villages in Marakwet, Kenya

Thank you for supporting HealthRight International’s Partnership for Maternal and Neonatal Health Plus (PMNH+) project. Please see the attached final report in PDF for summary and pictures.

Our objectives are to improve quality, availability and acceptability of Maternal Newborn Care (MNC) services at the facility level; to expand access to and utilization of MNC services at the community and household level; to increase adoption of healthy behaviors, including appropriate care seeking; and to improve evidence, policy and enabling environment for Maternal and Newborn Health. In addition, the PMNH+ project is one of the pioneering projects to develop response mechanisms or policies to promote respectful maternity care (RMC) in Kenya.

Here are some great impacts we have made in the last two months:

• 455 patients went through family planning education and were able to receive contraception when desired. Family planning has more than doubled in the last few months, up from 177 participants from last quarter. Surveys of women in Kenya suggest that a large percentage (around 66%) want to space or limit childbearing but are not using contraception. The intention to use contraception is higher among married women (77%). Women are more likely to intend using contraception in urban areas (69.3%) than they are in poorer, rural areas of Kenya (54.6%). This finding indicates a continuing, unmet need for contraception and HealthRight’s mobile clinics are trying to fill the unmet need by providing family planning education and contraception. High fertility may impede opportunities for economic development, increase health risks for women and children, and erode the quality of life by reducing access to education, nutrition, employment, and scarce resources such as potable water. HealthRight’s family planning services have increased greatly by 61% in these past months alone with more families outwardly seeking this kind of assistance.
• Fourty mobile clinics in last three months administered immunization to 1,900 patients. One in every 14 children in Kenya dies before the age of five. Rural children are twice as likely to die as those in urban areas. For children in these rural communities, a measles or polio vaccine can be a game changer. Immunization rates in Marakwet County are unacceptably low at less than 70%. This means that nearly one-third of children are at risk of serious illness because of where they live. HealthRight is working to even the odds for these children.
• 2,110 patients received deworming medication. Diarrhea is a leading killer of children in the world globally and significant portion of diarrhea is caused by worms that live in the intestines especially in developing countries. In 2013, nearly 15% of all child deaths were due to diarrhea in Kenya. We are hoping with HealthRight’s support on diarrhea prevention, fewer children will die from diarrhea.
• 600 women received antenatal care in their village. HealthRight-supported Mobile Clinics monitor women during pregnancy for signs of complications – such as high blood pressure, bleeding or dizziness – signs that mother or baby may be in danger. Only 20% of women in Marakwet seek adequate antenatal care in facilities during pregnancy. The distances are too great to walk and there is no public transport. This results in too many deaths of newborns and mothers during delivery. Thanks to HealthRight’s mobile clinics, 600 women and their babies have a greater chance of survival because they received antenatal care.

In total, this small Mobile Clinic project has reached 5,065 people in three months. The work continues but funding is in short supply. Please consider sharing this report and telling your friends and family about our progress. It can make all the difference in the world to us and the families we serve. Feel free to continue to follow our progress of PMNH+ project through our website: https://healthright.org/where-we-work/kenya/.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the Mobile Clinics project. Please feel free to contact us at Jennifer.Snell@HealthRight.org.

Once again, thank you for your continuing support!

• Quarterly Report Feb-April 2015 Infograph (PDF)