Defrontera

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.

In July 2024, Kenya was hit by an outbreak of the viral disease mpox. In August of that same year, the Africa CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a “high-risk public health threat”, and Kenya began its first vaccination campaign in September 2025 to curb the spread of the disease. A second vaccination campaign is already under way in the most vulnerable counties and among the most vulnerable groups.

The government of Kenya has fallen behind on an agreement it entered into with the United Nations Population Fund to provide matching funds for the procurement of contraceptive commodities, and repeated requests for the funds have been unsuccessful. “We do not want to offend the Treasury, but they have always said that we delay in requesting those funds; they always say,” a source at the Ministry of Health of Kenya, who is not authorised to speak, said.

The number of Kenyans receiving antiretroviral medication for HIV in programmes supported by the United States government declined by 12,000 between 2024 and 2025, a study has shown. A study published in the journal Nature Healthanalysed treatment data from 26 countries that received financial support from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and showed that the loss in Kenya was a modest 1% decline.

Kenya has secured a seat on the board of the Pandemic Fund, a global financing mechanism hosted by the World Bank. The role will give the country a vote in deciding what types of pandemic preparedness investments should be funded. The Pandemic Fund announced that Dr Maureen Kimenye, the Acting Director-General of the Kenya National Public Health Institute (KNPHI), will join the board as one of the nine Co-Investors.

Amid a chronic shortage of family planning supplies, the Ministry of Health risks losing KES 250 million earmarked for purchasing the commodities if it does not submit a request for the release of the funds by today, June 15. The government had committed KES 500 million to purchase family planning commodities for the current financial year, but the national procurement agency, the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA), has received only half that amount.

Throughout his career, microbiologist Professor Sam Kariuki has explored many fields, but he has never taken his eye off one: the microorganisms that live in the intestines and cause diarrhoea. Prof Kariuki and his colleagues in Kenya have generated a lot of research about diarrhoeal diseases: which pathogens cause severe illness in different parts of the country and how some have developed resistance to medicines designed to treat them.

After noticing a drop in deliveries in Level 4 and Level 5 hospitals, maternal health experts are asking the government to recategorise maternal health as an emergency to allow women to access care in referral hospitals without the required upfront annual payment. “We must treat pregnancy and delivery as a primary healthcare service, even in Level 4 and Level 5 facilities,” said Dr Mary Maina, an obstetrician-gynaecologist at Kiambu Level 5 Hospital.

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