Homa Bay Mother & Child Hospital

Priority projects under health are 1.1 Homa Bay Mother and Child Hospital 1.2 Strengthening Primary Health Care through Community Health Volunteers 1.3 Child Nutrition/ECDE Feeding Program 1.4 Solar Powered Health Centers.

Homa Bay has major challenges when it comes to maternal child health. Common causes for maternal mortality are; hemorrhage, hypertensive disorders in pregnancies, sepsis and obstructed delivery. Homa Bay County has a total of 304 facilities out of which 202 are GOK, 74 are private and 28 are faith based. Among the GoK facilities 134 are level two, 54 level 3 and 14 level 4. The county has no level 5 facility. These statistics make a compelling case for strengthening health care provision for mothers and children. We are therefore seeking financial and technical support for construction of a comprehensive 200-bed mother and child hospital within the Referral Hospital where there is sufficient land available. Estimated cost of construction and equipment is KES 250 million.

Strengthening Primary Healthcare through Community Health Volunteers

The county has 100% community health coverage, with 284 community units (CUs) and approximately 2950 Community Health Volunteers (CHVs). All the CUs have master community unit listing numbers (MCUL) and they report monthly in Kenya Health Information Software (KHIS) through MOH 515. The CHVs are a strong pillar for achieving universal primary care due to their critical role in the provision of preventive and promotive health care services at community level.

Areas for support to community health include –

• Implementing a robust performance management program for CHVs

• Payment of monthly stipends

• Training of new CHVs

We are seeking financial support for 3000 CHVs at a monthly stipend of KES 3,500 (including KES 500 for the National Health Insurance Fund), totaling KES 10.5M per month, or KES 126M annually. The program also requires technical support for the development of a robust performance management program for the CHVs.

Child Nutrition/ECDE Feeding Program

The stunting, wasting and underweight rates for Homa Bay County are 21.8%, 4.6% and 8.6% respectively (SMART, 2016). This means that whereas the acute malnutrition levels are within the normal range, the chronic malnutrition situation is high hence the need for long term interventions to curb the high stunting rates amongst children less than 5 years. 

The county has a total population of 77,429 children (39,114 boys and 38,315 girls) spread across the 881 ECD centers in the county. This provides a ready platform for interventions to be implemented targeting children of school going age. Programs such as school feeding in the Early Years Education centers with adequately fortified foods will enable the county to improve on the nutrition status of children in the county. The annual cost of feeding the school children is estimated at KES 250M

Energizing Health Care Facilities with Solar Power

Access to reliable energy is a key challenge for healthcare facilities in Homa Bay County. There are currently 100 facilities that do not have access to electricity. The facilities that are connected to the grid are not able to deliver services efficiently because of an unstable grid. We propose to use solar energy to power the facilities. 

Homa Bay County is seeking to partner with development institutions to support this solar energy project initiative. A key pillar in this project is supporting maternal and child healthcare through improving provision of services at the grassroot level. One of the focus areas is reducing child mortality and supporting prenatal and post-natal care. Initial estimates are at KES 2M per Kwp for solar PV system with storage per health center.