Ten months after the launch of Beyond Zero Mobile clinic by First Lady Margaret Kenyatta, the Samburu County leadership has appreciated the importance of health services provided by the clinic.
The vastness of the county, the hilly terrain and the circuitous and poor road network to access the three sub-counties of Samburu North, East and Central were sufficient grounds for the county government to secure Sh26 million to purchase two additional mobile clinics to facilitate equity in health service provision to its people.
Each of the three mobile clinics now serves one particular sub-county to ensure adequate service delivery to some of the most hardest to reach populations including hundreds of nomadic pastoralists who move from place to place looking for pasture.
The Beyond Zero mobile clinic delivered to the County by the First Lady on August 21, 2014 is detailed to provide services in Samburu Central Sub-County while the other two provide outreach health services in Samburu North and East Sub-Counties respectively.
The vast county borders the Counties of Turkana to the North West, Baringo to the South West, Marasabit to the North East, Isiolo to the East and Laikipia to the South.
Despite the vastness of the county, the disease presentations across the three sub-counties remain almost the same.
The three mobile clinics provide medical interventions among the top ten diseases that include Upper and Lower respiratory tract infections, diarrhoeal related illnesses, skin conditions, Malaria, Eye and Ear infections, all manner of injuries (animals, conflicts, ) and Typhoid in that order.
Due to the successful work of these mobile clinics, health indicators are improving steadily. Health talks, education and sensitization of women over the need to attend Ante-natal and post-natal services has also witnessed a rising number of women seeking to deliver in health facilities.
In 2013 for example, the number of women giving birth at health facilities stood at 2400 but that number now stands at about 4000 mothers (2015 figures).
The three mobile clinics are allocated funding through a budget by the county government.
Besides proving curative, preventive and promotive health services, the Beyond Zero initiative and its partners have started an advocacy, education and empowerment of the girl child through an aggressive campaign dabbed the Alternative Rite of Passage (ARP) to replace the retrogressive and outdated FGM.
So far, a total of 1200 young girls have undergone the ARP initiation programme since 2014. The programme covers counseling, life skills, the importance of completing school for the girls and cancer screening( cervical and breast) for their mothers.
These sessions are also used to popularize the Beyond Zero brand as a key facility for the health of mothers, adolescent girls and children.
Frontline partners involved in the ARP and other health services in Samburu include Amref, Afya Plus and World Vision.
Although the HIV/Aids scourge that is consuming other counties is not a big threat in Samburu, the County has however launched a HIV strategic Plan ( 2015/2020) to ensure alertness and preparedness to the pandemic.
The county’s prevalence stands at 2.2 per cent (according to the Kenya HIV Estimates 2015) compared to the national prevalence of 6 per cent.
The HIV prevalence among women in the county is higher (3.1%) than that of men (1.8%), indicating that women are more vulnerable to HIV infection than men in the County.
Samburu has contributed only 0.2% of the total number of people living with HIV in Kenya, and is ranked the forty second county nationally.
By the end of 2015, a total of 2,965 people were living with HIV in the county, with 15% being young people aged 15-24 years and 9% being children under the age of 15 years.
In 2014, there were 344 HIV positive pregnant women and 883 children living with HIV.
Some of the key drivers of the HIV epidemic in the county include socio-economic and cultural factors such as early marriages, poverty and insecurity, multiple sexual partnerships, generational sex, sharing of circumcision and FGM tools.
The other challenges are sex tourism, low condom uptake, early sexual debut by morans, wife inheritance and polygamy, unskilled deliveries and foreigners involved in the ongoing road construction work who induce the young girls with money.
Other key challenges directly facing the health sector in Samburu include inadequate funding, shortage of critical staff and inadequate and congested maternity facilities (including at the referral hospital).
By PSCU.