Health

In 2023, Kenya reported 223 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) per 100,000 people—a rate more than 20 times higher than most wealthy countries. But a different number tells a deeper story: Kenya’s TB case fatality rate was 20% in 2023, down from 47% in 2005. Fewer are dying from TB, even as infections remain high. This drop is a quiet public health victory, built not on eradicating TB, but on improving survival. It marks a turning point: Kenya hasn’t won the war, but it has drama

Once upon a time in Kenya, every village had a football team worth of children in every homestead. Fast-forward to 2022, and the once-vibrant Kenyan cradle is getting quieter. Behind this hush lies a silent demographic revolution. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR)—the average number of children per woman—has plummeted from a raucous 6.7 in 1989 to a rather restrained 3.4 in 2022. This is not just about babies. It’s about what kind of Kenya we’re building.

In 2020, if ten patients walked into a Kenyan health facility, nearly two of them were battling malaria. Fast forward to 2024, and that number has plummeted—now, just one in twenty patients presents with the disease. This remarkable turnaround is captured in data from the Economic Survey 2025, which shows malaria cases falling from 19.1% of all reported illnesses in 2020 to just 5.1% in 2024.

In Nairobi’s private hospitals, maternity wards now resemble surgical units. Soft overhead lights hum quietly, monitors beep steadily, and babies enter the world not through labour pains, but via precision incisions. In Kenya, a growing number of mothers are giving birth under the knife — and it’s becoming a costly trend. Over the past four years, Caesarean sections have been climbing steadily, carving out a bigger share of the country's deliveries.

In a world brimming with technological triumphs and medical marvels, one of the greatest victories of modern public health—measles vaccination—stands at an uneasy crossroads.

A single chart can tell a complex story — and this one spans five years of effort to improve water and sanitation access across the country. It shows that while some indicators are on a steady climb, others have flatlined, revealing opportunities for policy recalibration.

Every twelve steps you take in a crowd of humanity, you pass one person who is living in extreme poverty—trying to survive on less than $2.15 a day. Not because they lack ambition. Not because they lack intelligence. But because the odds are systemically stacked against them.

Solid waste. It’s not glamorous. But how we get rid of it—how we burn it, bury it, ignore it, or organize it—tells a deeply human story and a critical environmental one.