$5 million grant aids IU-Kenya health partnership

The Indiana-Kenya Partnership received a $5 million supplement toward promoting primary care facilities in Kenya, Africa.

The joint partnership also known as the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare connects the IU School of Medicine, the Moi University School of Medicine in Eldoret, Kenya and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. Together they treat more than 70,000 HIV patients in Kenya.

The supplement will promote primary health care facilities such as OB/GYNs, pediatricians and doctors dealing with more ordinary health issues.

Associate Dean for the program Dr. Robert Einterz began the Indiana-Kenya Partnership in the 1980s at the School of Medicine after having worked in Kenya as a physician dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

“Moi and IU provide a good health care model that does a good job of controlling and responding to crisis of the HIV problem. Much of what they do has to do with primary care, child care and such,” Einterz said. “The founders of the program were primary care physicians themselves, so their interest and focus is primary care.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development grant supplements the $60 million grant given to the program in 2007, which supported HIV/AIDS treatment in the country, said Megan Miller, director of development and communications for the Indiana-Kenya Partnership.

“The goal is to expand the services with the HIV clinics and provide primary care,” she said. “Primary care can be described as where you would go to deal with regular illnesses like flu, diabetes and sore throat. There are 23 clinics and additional satellite HIV clinics, which will be used to provide primary chronic disease management. There is need for identifying more health issues than just HIV.”

IU medical students help provide treatments. However, it is the residents of Nairobi, Kenya that keep the clinics, as well as the program, running.

The time of student stay varies, but many of the volunteers providing health care are first-year medical students. Students apply to work between the summer of their first and second year in medical school. 

“It is important to know that the people doing the bulk of the work and carrying the program are Kenyans themselves,” Einterz said. “We work with Moi and the Ministry of Health in Kenya, but Kenyans do the work, create the programs and really make the difference. Consider us catalysts and help the Kenyans what they’re doing.”