In the last decade, Kenya’s healthcare system has witnessed a transformation, with the country’s health workforce experiencing a substantial growth. According to a 2023 Health Labour Market Analysis, the country boasts of almost 190,000 active health workers across various critical health occupations, ranging from nurses and midwives to doctors, surgeons, and specialized healthcare professionals.
Kenya has made significant strides in healthcare workforce development, evident from the annual production of approximately 8,200 healthcare workers contributing to the expansion of the sector.
With projections indicating that the number of medical practitioners will go beyond the 270,000 mark by 2031, it is clear that the country is on the right path towards strengthening its healthcare workforce and meeting the growing healthcare needs of its population. This has partly been due to the National Health Workforce Accounts that was introduced to Ministry of Health in 2019 by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The system, designed to help countries collect, analyse and use data related to their health workforce, has been of great assistance to the country, helping to better identify staffing needs and investment areas that align with the Kenya Human Resources for Health Strategy 2019–2023. It has played a major role in pinpointing the mismatches between the supply and demand of healthcare workers and evaluating the feasibility and impact of various policy options.
By leveraging robust data and evidence-based insights, it put Kenya in a better positioned to make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and enhance the efficiency of its healthcare workforce.
“The steps that the country is taking to improve the quality and quantity of the health workforce will help universal health coverage become a reality,” Dr Abdourahmane Diallo, WHO Representative to Kenya, said.
Dr Diallo added that health workers are the backbone of the health system, and that digitization will play a critical role especially at the facility level in producing timely and accurate data collection, which continue to help health authorities identify staffing needs and gaps, facilitate targeted training programmes and distribute medical professionals equitably across the country.
According to Flavia Naudi, Health Records Information Officer at Railways Health Centre in Kisumu, the move to digital has been godsend. Naudi said, “We are part of the new generation that is actually using technology to improve healthcare service delivery on staffing and specialization.”
However, even with the improvements so far, the country still faces a great challenge as healthcare workforce is still quite low compared to population. As of 2020, the density of health workers in Kenya stood at 13.8 per 10,000 people. For Kenya, to bridge the gap that keeps increasing with the population, it is estimated that an investment increase of 7 to 11 per cent is imperative.
In accordance to Professor Francis Wafula, the board chair of the Kenya Health Human Resource Advisory Council, one of the most critical issue is inequitable distribution of health care workers, not only across Kenya’s 47 counties but also between urban and rural areas.
“We have a problem of poor distribution of health work force across the country. We need to strike a balance between what is acceptable in the context that we have and what inefficient use of the health workforce,” he says.
As the government of Kenya continues to commit to attracting more investments in health workforce to improve training, employment and retention, international organizations like WHO are also playing a part to bridge the gap. With a doubling health workforce and this commitment to ongoing improvement, Kenya has the right tools to make significant strides towards achieving its healthcare goals and ensuring a healthier future for its citizens.
