Defrontera

In New York Countries at a United Nations high-level meeting this week did not reach agreement on a global pandemic preparedness declaration, and instead, returned it to the General Assembly for further consideration. The meeting on Friday, the eighth that has been held in the last year and a half, was to be the final process to activate the pandemic agreement that was signed in May 2025. The agreement was to compel countries to share resources, such as information, when future pandemics emerge.

Verah Okeyo, in New York Kenya’s Director-General for Health, Dr Patrick Amoth, says financing for healthcare needs is the single biggest problem facing the Ministry of Health as he and other officials start the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “How do we marshal resources to ensure that not only do we protect the gains that we have made, but we can further the health of our people within the constrained fiscal space? That is the biggest challenge,” Dr Amoth said.

When a middle-aged man walked into his clinic in Kariobangi South, a low-income neighbourhood in Nairobi, clinician Ishmael Musembi listened to him explain his symptoms: a sharp pain in the upper belly and a gnawing loss of appetite. When the patient added that he was struggling with alcohol addiction, Musembi arrived at a diagnosis: alcoholic gastritis.

James Lokooli, a father of two who lives in Turkana, was diagnosed with tuberculosis after being screened during a community health outreach in Lorugum, in Loima Sub-County. He had developed a persistent cough, night sweats, and loss of appetite. But a health facility was too far from his home. “It was difficult for me to go there and get treatment,” said Lokooli. When health workers came to his village for an outreach, he decided to go and seek help.

Kenya has run out of a powerful new drug for HIV prevention, a looming problem that the National AIDS and STIs Control Programme (NASCOP) says has forced it to stop enrolling new people until the country receives new supplies in the near future. The drug in question is lenacapavir. It is taken as an injection twice a year as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a strategy for HIV prevention HIV.

Journalism is “a critical tool in the fight against malaria.” So said Kenya’s chief scientist, the director general of health, Dr Patrick Amoth. Speaking to Defrontera during a meeting with the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) in Nakuru on 2 June this year, Amoth argued that whatever solutions scientists develop will ultimately need the public to embrace them and policymakers to allocate money to them, and that needs journalism to reach those groups of people where they are.

Kenya's main finance and economic ministry has increased funding for health by KES 37.4 billion (about $289.4 million) and a 27% increase. The move is part of the country’s response to severe external funding cuts and declining foreign aid for health. Researchers have welcomed the health budget boost, but some say it is not a silver bullet.

We are thrilled to announce the Defrontera Newsroom Fellowship! The Defrontera Newsroom Fellowship is a one-year position, designed to offer recently graduated students in science and medical fieldsthe opportunity to work in a professional news environment, reporting science and health stories in Kenya for Defrontera’s digital platforms. The Newsroom Fellow is expected to be a self-starter who can manage their time, come up with story ideas, and follow through with assignments and meet deadlines.

After reported cases of clinicians mistakenly injecting a medicine used to reduce excessive bleeding after surgery into patients’ spinal canal, the Ministry of Health has silently moved to change the packaging and labelling of the medicines. In a letter reviewed by Defrontera, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said the ministry of health would label medicines differently so that they do not look like tranexamic acid, commonly known as TXA and injected intravenously.

A Kenya-based pharmaceutical company is one of the seven companies to which pharmaceutical company Merck has granted a licence to produce a low-cost version of a new monthly HIV prevention pill that is at a late stage of development. Universal Corporation Limited, a pharmaceutical company in Kiambu County, is one of the seven generic drugmakers that Merck will allow to make or import royalty-free generic alimatravir for HIV prevention, Merck said on Friday.