Seven institutions approved to train doctors

Kenya is set to boost its pool of desperately needed high-level health care professionals after the Ministry of Health approved seven public and private higher education institutions to train doctors. It is hoped that expanding medical training will stem a shortage that has been frustrating the country’s health care plans.

Four public universities – Egerton, Kenyatta, Maseno and Nairobi – are free to roll out programmes for doctors. Another state university, Moi, can train dentists.

Three private institutions – Kenya Methodist, Uzima and Mt Kenya – have also been cleared to train doctors by the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board, the agency that regulates the profession. Aga Khan University offers post-graduate training for doctors.

The ministry said it is seeking to rope in more institutions to train medical personnel in the coming five years.

Health care crisis

Kenya is grappling with a personnel shortage that has exacerbated a health care crisis in a country where diseases like malaria and HIV-Aids wreak havoc, killing thousands annually. This has been complicated by the brain drain and a general failure by local institutions to produce a steady stream of trained personnel.

The board said Kenya had only 8,711 registered medical doctors and 1,047 dentists. This means there is one doctor per 5,000 Kenyans – way below the global average which, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO, is one doctor per 700 people.

Health ministry statistics indicate that Kenya has fewer than 15 cancer specialists to deal with an average of 18,000 cancer cases diagnosed every year.

Funding for the health sector is inadequate. Government figures show that Kenya spends US$35 per capita on health, which is less than half the African average of US$78. The global average is US$800 per capita.

It takes around 12 years and more than US$42,000 to train a doctor in Kenya – five years of medical school, a year of internship in a government hospital, three years of graduate school, and two to three years in which a doctor is bonded to work for the government.

But health ministry officials say the biggest challenge to meeting human capital needs for the health sector has been lack of hospitals that meet the criteria for training. Institutions are not allowed to train medical personnel without affiliation to a recognised hospital.

It is estimated that only 380 new doctors join the workforce annually. The University of Nairobi, which has partnered with Kenyatta National Hospital, accounts for the bulk of the trainees – at around 300 – with the rest coming from Moi University.

Partnerships needed

The low pool of doctors is worrying policy-makers and experts. The World Bank said recently that Africa needed to seek partnerships with universities abroad, such as through the University of Michigan’s STEM-Africa initiative, which has nurtured young scientists and advanced research networks with institutions in Africa.

The World Bank is working with eight African governments and the Association of African Universities on the Africa Centres of Excellence initiative, which will strengthen 19 postgraduate research and training centres in West and Central Africa. The aim is to build and sustain excellence in higher education by fostering regional specialisation.

“There is scope for research collaboration between African and foreign scientists in medicine and biodiversity, irrigation, engineering, mining and other fields,” said Makhtar Diop, the World Bank’s vice president for Africa.

“But here is the challenge. We will only achieve these exciting research coalitions in Africa if we correct a longstanding imbalance in our education systems.

“Today, our stock of graduates is still highly skewed towards the humanities and social sciences, while the share of our students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – STEM – averages less than 25%,” he said.

Africa, according to WHO data, is home to only 3% of the world’s health workers who are fighting 24% of the global disease burden, with less than 1% of world health expenditure.

This is threatening attempts to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals on reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV-Aids and malaria.