Palliative care: Kenya’s current profile and prospects for the future

Palliative care is identified as a human right accessible at any point in the illness trajectory. Currently, it is estimated that 1% of the population in any African country requires palliative care services. Although the provision of these services has progressed in a positive direction in Kenya, they are still not fully integrated into mainstream health care. In this chapter, the authors outline the current state of palliative care in Kenya and make recommendations for the future. The chapter covers sociocultural and religious beliefs, their impact on palliative care, current organization of the health care system and the evaluation of palliative care services through the lens of health human resource capacity and through the WHO public health pillars of policy, access to essential drugs, education and service implementation. As a result of this analysis, the authors propose the development of a national palliative care strategic plan addressing practice, education and research. Such a plan can potentially contribute significantly to enhance contextually relevant palliative care service to improve the quality of palliative care for Kenyans.