Nakuru County Referral and Teaching Hospital (NCRTH) and the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP)-Kenya have signed a strategic partnership aimed at building health systems that are capable of responding effectively to emerging public health challenges in the region.
Nakuru County Referral and Teaching Hospital (NCRTH) Director Mr Santosh Devaraj said the partnership focused on identifying gaps and accelerating collaboration across several critical areas, including public health programming, disease surveillance, laboratory systems, and healthcare workforce development.
The chairman who was speaking when he hosted a delegation from ICAP Kenya led by Country Director Doris Naitore Mwenda, said the timing of the partnership was significant following emergence of worrying public health challenges such as Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) which he said had emerged as a bigger killer in Africa than malaria, HIV, or tuberculosis.
An estimated 1.05 million deaths associated with bacterial AMR and 250,000 deaths directly attributable to bacterial AMR were recorded in the WHO African region in 2019 alone.
In Kenya, only 18 per cent of bacterial isolates tested are fully susceptible to commonly available antimicrobials, with the majority of strains showing multi-drug resistance, according to MOH records.
Mr Devaraj presented key priority areas requiring urgent support, including laboratory quality management systems, ISO certification, diagnostic equipment and the strengthening of microbiology services, which he said will enhance patient care and service delivery.
On the laboratory front, the chairman said the push for ISO certification and quality management systems at NCRTH aligns with a broader continental challenge, where initiatives like Laboratory Quality Management Systems and ISO 15189 offer hope, with implementation remaining uneven in resource-constrained settings across Africa, according to the African Society for Laboratory Medicine.
NCRTH, elevated in 2019 to a Level 6 facility on par with Kenyatta National Hospital and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, is a national referral institution founded in 1906.
Official health data shows that the hospital has a total inpatient bed capacity of 1,129, including 861 general beds, 250 maternity beds, and 11 emergency casualty beds.
The referral hospital has recorded more than 132,000 hospital visits under the Social Health Authority framework alone, serving patients from Nakuru and several surrounding counties.
ICAP Kenya Country Director Doris Mwenda said the programme collaborates closely with the national Ministry of Health and County departments of Health to strengthen a unified national surveillance system and digitalise real-time surveillance data.
She said ICAP was working with more than 20 County departments of Health and an equal number of County Referral Hospitals adding that ICAP had been a leading partner of the Ministry of Health in Kenya since 2006, strengthening the national response to HIV, COVID-19, the laboratory system, infection prevention and control, and global health security.
The Director further explained that ICAP-backed efforts had helped 89 laboratories achieve international accreditation and created a network of more than 20 sub-national Emergency Operations Centres that have responded to over 100 disease outbreaks as of 2024.
Africa’s health workforce has grown to 5.72 million in 2024, up from 4.3 million in 2018, yet the African region still has only 46 per cent of the health workers it needs, with WHO projecting a shortage of 5.85 million health workers by 2030.
Africa carries an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s disease burden but accounts for only three per cent of the global healthcare workforce.
ICAP’s recent work at Kenyan health facilities has demonstrated measurable gains at MP Shah Hospital as pneumonia cases fell from three to zero and bloodstream infections also fell from three to zero between 2023 and 2025, following ICAP-supported healthcare-associated infection surveillance programmes.
On Kenya’s national AMR response, by mid-November 2024, only 20 of Kenya’s 47 counties had established County AMR Steering and Implementation Committees.
ICAP Kenya Country Director Doris Naitore had previously noted that integrated data collection tools were critical for enabling contact tracing, laboratory results and location data to drive efficient public health responses.
The engagement reaffirmed that partnerships between teaching hospitals and global health organisations remain central to building health systems capable of responding effectively to emerging public health challenges — a priority underscored by Kenya’s validation of its second-generation National Action Plan for Health Security covering 2026 to 2030.
By Jefther Simeon Afuyo and Esther Mwangi
