TwoHelp Kenya

Departure imminent

Alexis left for Atlanta two nights ago and I leave for Kenya in about 36 hours. As is usual with any long trip, I’m having a bit of a difficult time trying to figure out what I should take and what I should pack it in.

The trip to Kenya, as previously mentioned, is through the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, known as HHI, and is sponsored by the Fritz Institute. To make a long story short, a consortium of sub-Saharan African national Red Cross organizations, known as NEPARC, is working with Fritz support to improve their services and programs. This multi-stage process began with an evaluation of organizational and managerial capacity among the affiliate organizations. The second stage involves evaluating programs and their outcomes. The team from HHI that is going to Kenya will look at the HIV/AIDS programs run by the Kenyan Red Cross and develop a tool for evaluating the programs. This is a pilot of the second phase of the project. The tool that we develop ultimately will be used to evaluate the HIV/AIDS programs run by the other NEPARC member organizations. Since the majority of funding for health services at Red Cross affiliates throughout sub-Saharan Africa goes to HIV/AIDS programs, the outcomes of the evaluation of these programs will stand as proxy for the performance of all of the health-related projects. (Other organizations are evaluating other programs, such as disaster relief services, etc…)

Kenya is located in east Africa. It is bordered on the north by Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan, on the west by Uganda, and on the south by Tanzania. The capitol, Nairobi, is a city of approximately 2-3 million people. Uganda and Kenya are former British colonies. Nairobi was founded a little over 100 years ago while the British were trying to build a railroad from Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, to Kampala, the capitol of Uganda.

There are approximately 35 million people in Kenya, of whom it is estimated that 7% have HIV/AIDS. As with many other countries heavily affected by HIV, the life expectancy is low, hovering around 48 years for both men and women. In 2003 it was estimated that 1.2 million people in Kenya were infected with HIV and 150,000 died from AIDS.

Parts of Kenya are currently experiencing a drought. While famine is an ongoing concern in these areas, it is important to consider that malnutrition can magnify problems with AIDS. People who are unable to take food with their antiretroviral therapy (to combat HIV) can develop stomach ulcers, which makes it difficult for them to continue their treatment. Treatment of any disease is a difficult and complicated process. This is especially true with HIV, which attacks the immune system and makes infected individual more prone to developing other dangerous diseases, such as tuberculosis.

If you stop to consider that approximately 50% of the people living in Kenya survive on less than $1 per day, it is easy to understand why implementing effective prevention and treatment programs for any disease is difficult. In short, there is a lot of unmet need. It is only with the support of organizations like the Kenyan Red Cross that many people in Kenya receive treatment for their ailments or food for their table.

I am thrilled to be a part of the team from HHI that will assist the Kenyan Red Cross (KRC) and the Fritz Institute in their effort to improve the capacity of health services offered by the NAPARC members. Check back here for updates on the work that we do in Kenya and thoughts about other experiences that I have during my time there.