Kenya Paediatric Fellowship Program (KPFP)

Kenya Paediatric Fellowship Program (KPFP) is a four-year program running from June 2019 to June 2023, funded by the ELMA Foundation. KPFP was established in July 2019 to begin addressing shortages of childcare specialists by offering 24 scholarships to paediatricians to specialize in critical Paediatric subspecialty areas, namely: Neonatology, Hemato-Oncology, Neurology, Infectious diseases, Endocrinology, and Emergency and Critical Care. In the nursing cadre, 30 midwives and 94 Paediatric nurses and Paediatric critical care nurses will benefit from the scholarship. The partner training institutions for this fellowship program are: University of Nairobi, Moi University, Aga Khan University & Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital School of Nursing.

Background

There is a shortage of paediatric specialists and nurse midwives in Kenya. A case in point is that of paediatricians, whereby of the available 440 paediatricians, only 114(25.9%) are working in the public sector. A further assessment against the recommended staffing levels shows that only an estimated 5 County Referral Hospitals have the recommended four paediatricians. Even more grave is the lack of paediatric sub-specialists in the public facilities as they primarily work in national referral hospitals and the private sector and, most specifically, in Nairobi County. With these shortages and skewed distribution, most children requiring specialized care have reduced chances to survive and thrive. KPFP was established to begin addressing shortages of childcare specialists through building Kenya’s training institutions’ capacity to offer quality paediatric sub-specialty training programs to Kenyan paediatric specialists and the African region at large.

Overall goal and aims of KPFP

The overall goal of KPFP is to expand the capacity of training institutions to select, train and deploy quality Paediatric sub-specialists, midwives, and Paediatric nurses and address the shortage and inequitable distribution of specialized child health workforce in the public sector.

Objectives

1. Improve strategic selection and deployment to address inequitable distribution of specialized child health workforce
2. Train specialists in pediatrics and maternal-newborn health
3. Support Universities to build faculty capacity and establish infrastructure to develop new pediatric sub-specialty fellowship programs
4. Improve the quality of training and mentorship of graduates to increase impact post-deployment