About 5,000 children and youth under 21 years old have been impacted by Safaricom Foundation’s Children with Diabetes Programme which entails early detection and screening, as well as management of Type 1 diabetes.
Meanwhile, 435 children are continuously receiving diabetes commodities such as insulin and syringes for management and care, with 60 community health volunteers enrolled in the programme.
The three-year programme comes to an end this month with the Foundation investing KES 120 million in infrastructure and material support, including a modern child friendly diabetic clinic at the Garissa Referral Hospital. The programme is a partnership between the Garissa County Government, Goldstar Kenya and Kenya Diabetes Management and Information Centre (DMI Kenya).
“This programme is ending this month as part of the 3-year programme. We can look back and thank our partners for support especially through community mobilisation. The intention of the programme was to improve early detection systems in managing diabetes. We also wanted to improve the comprehensive care and management of diabetes in children. We also wanted to provide a strong backbone for the healthcare systems to manage, monitor and provide services concerning Type 1 diabetes,” said Barack Odera, Trustee, Safaricom Foundation.
A further 550 children have been trained on diabetes self- management with 140 health care and community health workers trained on Type 1 diabetes management and care from all the 7 sub-counties of Garissa. Over 200 households have been enrolled onto NHIF as part of the programme.