As Kenya marks 50 years of independence, Kenya’s health at 50 gauges the wellbeing of Kenyans through a review of key health indicators including life expectancy, birth rate, and maternal and child deaths as well as GDP over time.

The analysis compares Kenya’s performance with that of Singapore, Malaysia and Colombia over the last five decades. The four countries, along with 76 others, had a GDP per capita of less than US$2,500 in 1960.

Kenya’s health at 50 explores what the three countries did right to make great strides on improving their health status even as Kenya lagged behind. As illustrated in the line graph titled Kenya lags behind, the story reveals that although the other countries had a head start on Kenya, the country made a good effort to close the gap in the first two decades after independence only for it to fall behind from the mid 1980s when the economy started to tank reaching negative growth in 1990s.  HIV also took a toll on the country during that period. Kenya’s worst performance in the last 50 years on the key health indicators   life expectancy, maternal and child deaths and birth rate - compared to that of the three countries, is recorded in the mid-1980s to early 2000.

First two decades

Within the first 10 years of independence Kenya experienced the highest improvement in life expectancy, which grew by six years to reach 54 years. Consequently in 1973  the life expectancy gap between Kenya and Singapore, with a life expectancy of 69 years, narrowed to 15 years from a gap of 19 years in 1963  (see annotated line graph, Health indicators). During the same period Malaysia’s life expectancy improved by three years while Colombia’s increased by four years.

A deeper analysis of data shows that Kenya’s GDP per capita improved by almost 50 per cent between 1970 and 1980. It is the best increase in the last five decade with the second best improvement is 12 per cent in the preceding decade. This growth coincides with the biggest increase in life expectancy at 13 per cent between 1960 and 1970 and 11 per cent between 1970 and 1980. In contrast, between 1990 and 2000 when the GDP per capita dips by 10 per cent life expectancy also drops by 12 percent.

Kenya’s begins to play catch up in the mid 2000s as the economy stabilises and begin to grow modestly. But the country has a long way to go as illustrated in The country’s report cards.

Singapore, which got its independence in the same year as Kenya, had the third lowest infant deaths per 1,000 live births and birth rate, and the ninth best life expectancy in the world in 2011. On all the indicators not only has Kenya done worse than the three countries under study, the country’s averages are way below the world’s.

Role of economy growth

Clearly, GDP per capita growth of the countries has played a key role. In the last 50 years, Singapore's GDP per capita grew 16 times faster than Kenya’s. Malaysia's GDP per capita grew eight times faster than Kenya and Colombia's GDP grew two times faster than Kenya’s. As the three country’s’ economies grew they invested more in health, infrastructure and social programmes and this improved access to healthcare. The story was the same in Kenya in the 1960s and early 1970s.

For instance, at the time of Kenya's independence in 1963 the country's life expectancy was 48 years. A fast-growing economy, poverty reduction programs and increased investments in health, slowly led to better access to healthcare.