Expected Outcome of the 4th East African Healthcare for Kenya
Background: The East African Healthcare Conference brings together leaders in Healthcare from the UK and the East African countries and seeks areas of collaboration and partnerships. The benefits of this conference speak for themselves as many partnerships have been formed from knowledge and skills transfer to investment in healthcare. However, Kenya to date has played a very low key in the previous events and thus could not directly benefit from the conference.
Outcome: This year’s conference hopes to see the establishment of a Kenya UK Health Alliance that will be the driving vehicle to many areas of collaboration and partnership between UK Health institutions and Kenyan Health institutions.
Benefits of forming the Health Alliance: The initial areas that the alliance proposes to offer, but not limited to, will include the expertise of the Diaspora and the NHS in general (which can be targeted at different needs) experts in:
- Healthcare finance
- Health system management
- Healthcare management
- Clinical training, education and skills in most disciplines and subjects: including medical, nursing and other healthcare professions for most specialities.
Kenya UK Health Alliance Partners: A steering committee that shall comprise the Diaspora, UK health institutions ( NHS England, HEE, THET and others), senior MOH officials, County Government Health officials and academic institutions shall be formed with an objective to advise, guide and approve the development and implementation of activities and associated projects of the Alliance and to ensure that they are in line with the national and Global health attainment goals
Proposed Alliance structure: The suggested structure is the model based on Myanmar UK Health Alliance or Uganda UK Health Alliance.
Kenya’s divided healthcare responsibility between the two levels of government the central and county government has been taken into consideration in the proposal of the formation of the Kenya UK Health Alliance. With essential health service delivery being close to the people and the responsibility of the county government, the alliance will seek in areas such as volunteerism and workforce training to partner with the counties while still working in collaboration with the central Government on matters of policy development and technical assistance.
Proposed Board Structure
UK side:
- Kenya High Commissioner to the UK
- Health Education England (HEE)
- Tropical Health Education Trust (THET)
- NHS England
- Trade envoy to Kenya Parliamentary
- TPN members/Diaspora members
- Others as identified
- CS of Health/ Permanent secretary to chair or co-chair
- COG Chairman of Health/a county health minister-chair or co-chair
- Chair Person of Kenya Medical Association
- Alliance Desk in the MOH
- Alliance desk at the Council of Governors
- Representative from Level 5 hospitals
- THET country representative/director
- British High Commissioner in Kenya
- Others to be identified as discussions unfold
Potential donors: The UK side will explore potential host countries bilateral cooperation who would be interested to support the diaspora from the countries i.e DFID, SDC, Iris aid, USAID.
Next Steps: A special meeting to be set up to meet with Kenyan side led by the Kenyan High Commissioner on the Thursday 25/4/2019 or Friday 26/4/2019. The rationale of this date being that the conference date is 27/4/2019 and the Kenyan delegates will already be in London. The meeting will be to formally discuss the set up of the alliance and the signing of an MOU.