The medical needs facing sub-Saharan Africa are immense and complex. With the world’s fastest-growing population and some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, there are ever-increasing needs for medical providers. Many people in rural villages still lack access to basic healthcare for common infectious diseases like malaria, while richer places and urban areas are struggling to cope with the growing burden of hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease.

Most doctors don’t get to do more than one year of postgraduate training, and thousands of doctors trained in sub-Saharan Africa have left to practice elsewhere. While every health professional is a necessary part of making any health system work, doctors are necessary to manage more complex patients, stay on top of the medical literature, and help to keep medical teams organized. Unfortunately, there simply aren’t enough doctors and they are rarely able to get the training they need to do all of these things.

At the Kabarak Family Medicine Residency, we are training family doctors to fill this important and enormous need. Our residents learn the clinical skills necessary to manage a variety of patients over the lifespan — they can handle acute emergencies in a district hospital and carefully manage chronic diseases so that adults can live longer and happier. They can help hospitals use research and quality improvement to make their systems serve patients better.  They are just as capable at building relationships with families and communities in remote clinics to promote healthy behaviors. Our four-year program trains doctors capable of strengthening health systems, not just filling in a slot.

Throughout the developed world, the government pays for all costs of postgraduate medical training. Here in Kenya, only a handful of doctors every year are able to get government sponsorship and those who do get sponsored do not always get enough to cover all of their tuition and living expenses. We are trying to develop long-term funding strategies, but Family Medicine is still mostly unknown in Kenya and it will take time for our graduates to trickle out and help people understand how family doctors can help build better systems wherever they are. We want to ensure that residents are paid throughout their training so that they can focus on their education; to continue, we need your support.

Donations are received by World Gospel Mission, Acct. #125- 35202 – “Kenya INFA-MED General Account“. An IRS tax receipt is issued.  The Institute of Family Medicine (INFA-MED) is our Kenya partner.  If you are giving for a specific resident, please specify on a separate note from your check.  Send your check to: WGM, PO Box 948, Marion IN 46952-0948. You can give online at:

https://www.wgm.org/project/kenya-infamed-general-account

We appreciate your prayerful consideration of support.

 

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Pictured: Rising 3rd-year residents along with faculty in May 2018