Tackling Kenya’s health challenges

Transmitted across the airwaves in Kenya’s Western Province, WEST FM radio reaches 2.5 million people with messages about HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, and other health topics. This information is essential to listeners facing the challenges of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, family planning, and maternal and child health risks—especially because services aren’t reliably reaching the women, men, and children who need them.

WEST FM is just one component of a multifaceted effort to expand health services and increase communities’ awareness of their options for improving their own health. PATH’s creative approach boosts community knowledge about health services and healthy behaviors through radio broadcasts, community theater, health fairs, workplace visits, and events geared to hard-to-reach groups, such as married adolescents. We also strengthen facility-based services for a range of health issues and offer support for individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS.

The program has had an immense reach. In 2008, PATH and our partners extended HIV counseling and testing to 146,000 individuals, reached more than 100,000 pregnant women with services to prevent transmitting HIV to their children, and trained more than 500 health workers to counsel and test HIV patients. We offered support groups to 45,000 adults and children living with HIV/AIDS and provided financial, educational, and health assistance to 35,000 children orphaned or left vulnerable by HIV. With each step, the project has helped Kenyans find ways to protect and improve their health.

Photo: PATH.

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