- Maternal Health
- Child Health
- Public Healthcare
- Health Financing
The health of the nation provides the most recent comparable indicators of health and health expenditure in the country's 47 counties.
The data that was sourced from several government departments in the Ministry of Health reveals great inequalities between counties. The results show that counties in marginalised areas are performing poorly in nearly all the indicators. The key indicators presented in the data include: Maternal health, nutrition, child health, health facilities and data on health financing as well as HIV, TB and Malaria for 2011 and 2012.
There is overwhelming evidence that giving birth with the help of a trained health worker in hospital drastically reduces child and maternal deaths yet wide disparities among counties on where women give birth remains. On this indicator counties in Central region fair extremely well. In Nyeri County, for instance, 9 in 10 women deliver at a health facility while in Kirinyaga, Kiambu and Nyandarua 7 out of 10 women deliver in a health facility. In Nairobi, only 5 in 10 women give birth in a health facility but the worst off counties are in the North Rift and North Eastern regions. In Turkana, West Pokot and Wajir, about 2 out of 10 women deliver at a health facility.
Turkana: 2 out of 10 Women deliver in a health facility
The picture is much the same when one looks at the child health dataset which ranks Nairobi and Central regions tops on immunisation. In the two regions, 9 out of 10 children are fully immunised while in the bottom five counties, which are from the North Rift and Northeastern regions, only 5 out of 10 children are fully immunised.
And it seems that the Kenyan government believes in the old adage: prevention is better than cure for they are putting their money on it. One average preventive service budget per person is Sh669 (62 per cent) while that of curative budget per person is Sh439 (38 percent).