maternal and child health programs in Kenya

Our maternal and child health programs target the most vulnerable community members, including children under five and pregnant and lactating women.

Kenya is one of the most popular destinations in Africa for westerners, who are drawn by the country’s rich culture, spectacular wildlife parks, relatively easy accessibility and—until recently—political stability. Yet violence following Kenya’s 2007 elections left approximately 1,000 people dead, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and the nation reeling. Kenya also hosts a quiet killer: HIV/AIDS. With one of the world’s highest HIV/AIDS rates, an estimated 1.5 million Kenyans are infected.

International Medical Corps has more than a decade of experience working in Kenya, much of it at the center of the battle to contain Kenya’s HIV/AIDS epidemic. We are currently implementing two large HIV/AIDS programs. One program targets fishing communities, youth, and sex workers in the western province of Nyanza, Coast Province. The other is a five-year program that provides testing, prevention, and treatment of HIV/AIDS, as well as counseling, in Kenya’s prisons. As tuberculosis (TB) is the most common opportunistic infection among people weakened by HIV/AIDS, International Medical Corps also engaged in TB screening and treatment in Coast Province through a project that ended in 2011. In addition, we operate five emergency nutrition programs for drought-stricken areas in northern Kenya, where Kenyans’ livelihoods have been impacted by unrest and famine in neighboring Somalia.