Why Kenya is now grappling with health sector challenges
By George Kebaso, July 25, 2025Kenya could not have been where it is, with a struggling healthcare system, had the country not ignored numerous red flags over the impending donor funding cuts, health stakeholders have said in Nairobi.
Dr Willis Akhwale, the National End Malaria Council adviser, yesterday gave a chronology of where the rains started beating us. He explained that from the year 2000, at the advent of donor funding, colourful proposals were funded with the hope that the recipient country will merge the funding, but this did not happen. As the money trickled in, the malaria specialist noted that nobody thought that there would be a time that this would stop.
“You could literally say money was flowing through our ears. And during that time, in many of the grant applications, we were always asked, how are you going to sustain what we are doing? We always used to put a footnote and say sustainability was always the last paragraph of the application, and we will talk nicely to our governments to put some money in the budget,” he said during the maiden Thought Leadership Series hosted by the Kenya Editors’ Guild (KEG) in Nairobi yesterday.
The forum focused on the impact of ODA (Official Development Assistance) cuts on health and development in Africa. The phrase, he repeated, would always go like good promises in the proposals that Kenya will look at the issue of local manufacture.
“We would always say we are going to do some fundraising activity on the other. But the truth of the matter, we never followed that seriously. And another year would come and we would repeat the same things,” he said, noting that as this happened, the donors started telling the government that there is a plateau of the resources.
By then, he recollected, the word was, stretch the dollar as much as possible, with the donors telling Kenyans they will give the same money like the previous year.
Despite the success recorded in the funded interventions, Akhwale regrets that if the country actualised what was promised in those numerous proposals, Kenya could not be where it is now.
Changing priorities
“This is a question we asked, especially from early this year with the severe cuts from the U.S. government. Prior to that, many other countries had actually reduced funding,” he added, revealing that the projections show that the funding is going to be reduced further.
In view of this, Amref Health Africa Chief Executive Officer, Dr Githinji Gitahi said there is need for the country to carry out reforms in the country’s healthcare system to protect it from the impact of declining ODA. He urged the government to prioritise funding for HIV, tuberculosis, and family planning programmes.
“We must refocus and recognise that these programmes are critical for social and economic development. The government must allocate money for them,” said Dr Gitahi.
He noted the importance of building public health institutions, describing them as the backbone of healthcare in Kenya.
“We know that in this country, the best services in terms of quality exist in the public sector. The best quality assurance is in the public, even as we talk about having all public servants use public hospitals, it should be a better place and equal for all,” he explained.