Our Purpose
We believe that health is a basic human right. Everything we do ensures lasting health change for all.
The Challenge
Every child deserves to have a healthy start in life. Unfortunately, every year, millions of parents lose their children to preventable illnesses because they do not have access to life-saving childhood vaccines. Equally, every mother should have access to quality health care during pregnancy and childbirth. According to the World Health Organisation, more than 800 women die every day from complications in pregnancy and childbirth. The majority of these deaths can be prevented with the right resources and care.
Most of these deaths happen in the low and middle-income countries and are particularly high in rural areas. Kenya, like other developing countries, has a significant proportion of children not accessing essential health services. Similarly, pregnant women do not complete the recommended antenatal and postnatal care visits. Deliveries continue to occur outside health facilities and by unskilled birth attendants. Most health facilities have weak systems to manage maternal and child health effectively, including referrals from and to the community.
The Opportunity
Enabling young children to achieve their full developmental potential and mothers to access quality health care is a human right and an essential requisite for sustainable development. Given the critical importance of enabling children to make the best start in life and women to access quality healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth, the health sector, among other sectors, has an important role and responsibility to support nurturing care for early childhood development.
Early child deaths are preventable, and illnesses can be treated with simple, affordable interventions including immunisation, adequate nutrition, safe water and food and appropriate care by a trained health provider when needed. This is complemented by the availability of essential drugs, supplies, and equipment and referral systems. In addition, creating a community that owns its health is imperative. This can be made possible through a commitment by state actors in strengthening the health system, collaboration and partnerships with non-state actors, and elaborate context-specific community engagements.
Our Approach
Amref Health Africa in Kenya invests in proven approaches to maternal and child health in low resource communities to improve the health of women and children.
Amref deploys innovative approaches to strengthen the capacity of both the public and private sectors to deliver high-impact health interventions to reduce maternal, newborn, and child mortality and morbidity.
Our approaches are designed to strengthen Kenya’s health system for sustainability of health gains. We invest in strengthening leadership, management and governance of the health sector; capacity of frontline health workers to provide quality health services; communities to participate and have greater ownership of their health and sustained financial protection.
Our ASK
To partner with development partners, funding agencies, philanthropists and corporates with an interest of sustainably improving maternal and child health outcomes in resource-poor communities in Kenya in areas of health system strengthening and improving the supply and demand of quality maternal and child health services.
