NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 2 – A new report on the Status of cancer in Kenya show that currently there are 58 oncologists, 60 oncology nurses and 12 oncology pharmacists.
According to the study, there are 10 Medical physicists, 27 radiotherapy technologists and two nuclear medicine physicians.
The findings by the National Cancer Institute shows that there are three national comprehensive cancer centers in the country including Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital and Kenyatta University Teaching Research and Referral Hospital.
The Kenyatta University Teaching Research and Referral hospital (KUTRRH) has a state of the art Integrated Molecular Imaging Centre providing PET/SPECT CT services and linked to a hospitality center. They also recently acquired a cyber-knife for highly specialized cancer treatment.
There are ten regional cancer centers in Mombasa, Garissa, Nakuru, Nyeri, Meru, Embu, Machakos, Kisumu, Kakamega and Longisa.
Three of these that is Garissa, Nakuru and Mombasa are able to provide radiotherapy services.
In the private sector, there are six radiotherapy centres including Agha Khan, Nairobi hospital, Texas cancer center, Nairobi West hospital, Cancer care Kenya and Equra Cancer Centre in Eldoret.
There are nineteen external beam radiotherapy machines in the country with eight units in public hospitals.
“This falls short of the recommendation by the International Atomic Energy Agency of atleast 1 machine per 1,000,000 population,” reads the report.
As of 2019, only 0.5 per cent of the overall health budget was spent on cancer despite the disease contributing 10 per cent of overall disease burden in the country.
NHIF supported approximately 50,000 cancer patients at a cost of Sh1.4 billion in the Financial Year 2019/2020 and Sh1.52 billion in the financial year 2020/2021.
“Cancer accounts for 2.5 per cent of the total payout by NHIF per year,” it reads.
In terms of local training programs for oncology, there is Radiation oncology at the University of Nairobi, Medical Oncology at the University of Nairobi and Agha Khan, Oncology nursing in UoN, KUTRRH, MTRH, KNH and AKUH.
Technical University has a Medical Physics program.
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