People living with sickle cell disease in Nairobi will no longer have to travel long distances for specialised care after the government opened a comprehensive clinic at Kianda 42 Level Four Hospital, bringing key services closer to the communities that need them most.
Health officials said the new facility has been established to make it easier for patients to receive diagnosis, treatment and routine follow-up without depending on referral hospitals. The clinic will provide screening, confirm cases of sickle cell disease, offer treatment and monitor patients throughout their care.
“We have launched a comprehensive sickle cell clinic at Kianda 42 Level Four Hospital, and we are essentially bringing services for sickle cell warriors closer to where they live,” Dr Gladwell Gathecha, Head of the Division of Cancer and Non-Communicable Diseases at the Ministry of Health, said.
The hospital has been supplied with 10,000 hydroxyurea capsules together with Gazelle diagnostic machines that can detect and confirm sickle cell disease. Health officials said the equipment will help improve services that have not been widely available in lower-level health facilities.
The launch comes as the country continues to record thousands of new cases every year. Ministry of Health data shows that about 14,000 babies are born with sickle cell disease annually, while an estimated 250,000 Kenyans are living with the condition.
“We estimate that each year we have around 14,000 babies that are born with sickle cell,” Dr Gathecha said. “When we look at the whole picture, we can estimate that around 250,000 Kenyans are living with sickle cell disease.”
She said the disease remains more common in 17 counties in western Kenya, the Coast region and Nairobi. However, increased movement of people and intermarriage have spread the condition beyond those areas, making screening important across the country.
Dr Gathecha also said the country still lacks enough information on the disease, making it difficult to plan for medicines, laboratory services and specialised treatment.
“I have to admit that we don’t have very good data,” Dr Gathecha acknowledged, underscoring the challenge policymakers face in planning medicines, laboratory services and specialised care.
As part of efforts to improve services, the Ministry of Health is introducing a hub-and-spoke system where county referral hospitals will support smaller clinics located within communities to ensure patients receive care nearer to their homes.
Nairobi County Director of Medical Services Dr Moses Owino said the county plans to roll out more sickle cell clinics in Westlands, Mukuru, Githurai, Mathare North, Riruta and Mama Lucy Hospital to make treatment easier to access.
“The first thing that we need to do is mobilise more children to come and seek care,” Dr Owino said, adding that the expansion aims to ensure comprehensive outpatient and inpatient services are available across the capital.
For many families, having treatment available nearby is expected to reduce the burden of travelling for frequent hospital visits. Children with sickle cell disease often require regular laboratory tests, medicine and emergency care whenever they experience painful episodes.
The Children's Sickle Cell Foundation, which is supporting the programme, said improving access to treatment should go hand in hand with educating communities about the disease.
“Many of our patients or people living with sickle cell do not have proper access to care. Some of them have to travel quite far to get care,” said Celine Ogweno of the Children’s Sickle Cell Foundation.
She said the programme will also expand community screening to identify carriers of the sickle cell gene and reduce stigma through education.
“If we encourage people to screen, if we talk about it every day, I believe it reduces stigma because then we understand that it’s all about our genetic composition,” Ogweno said.
Health officials said that while bone marrow transplant remains a treatment option for some patients, the immediate goal is to strengthen care at community level so more children are diagnosed early, receive regular treatment and avoid life-threatening complications. They said expanding county clinics is expected to improve access to care while supporting long-term management of the disease.