Kenya
OPPORTUNITY
Gaps in the Continuum of Care for babies and young children with hearing loss persist in Kenya due to low awareness, delayed diagnosis, and limited expertise and services—most of which are centralized in Nairobi, leaving families living outside the capital underserved.
OUR SOLUTION
The Kenya government approved its new National Ear and Hearing Care Strategy in 2023. Among key priorities are to establish newborn hearing screening, expand financial coverage to hearing technology (hearing aids, cochlear implants), and to develop professional expertise and services to address pediatric hearing loss. These improvements will help more babies and young children with hearing loss in Kenya to successfully achieve listening and spoken language outcomes.
The Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss began collaborating with the University of Nairobi in 2024 to achieve these aims.
PROFESSIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMS
The GFCHL team of professionals is teaching the GFCHL’s proprietary training programs in auditory-verbal therapy and pediatric audiology in Kenya.
Our curriculum is designed to develop local expertise to help babies and young children with hearing aids and cochlear implants learn to listen and speak. There are few professionals in Kenya with the skills to provide such specialized care.
A cohort of Kenyan audiology and speech therapy professionals, community health workers, kindergarten teachers, and other providers from five counties (states) are engaged in the GFCHL training program.
Our training program is unique in that we invest in the participants’ learning over time. The cohort has committed to attending the entire series of scaffolding, 2-week workshops taught in Kenya over two years. We combine theory with practicum in each workshop so they can apply what they have learned. We also provide online support and video analysis to support their development between in-country training workshops.
The Kenyan participants who complete the GFCHL training program will receive a certificate from the University of Nairobi and the GFCHL. They will be prepared to serve babies and young children with hearing loss who live in their respective counties and to train others in the country to make the benefits exponential and sustainable.
Parents/caregivers and their very young children with hearing loss participate in the practicum sessions and attend evening seminars to learn how to help their children develop listening and spoken language at home.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
We have spent a great deal of time in Kenya developing personal relationships with families, caregivers, and the professionals who serve them, learning about the landscape of care, and advancing the GFCHL’s connections with various local organizations.
We see an opportunity to raise awareness for pediatric hearing loss in the communities around Kenya and to bring the GFCHL’s expertise to additional groups. These short video clips featuring local Kenyans touch on some of these issues:
We invite you to enjoy this special podcast that talks about our work and our partnership with Kenya Connect to extend these messages further out into the community. It features insights from the GFCHL professional team and local perspectives from Kenyan health and education providers.
PEDIATRIC HEARING SCREENING
The GFCHL has also committed resources and technical expertise to establish pediatric hearing screening in Kenya. Thus far, our efforts have enabled such services for newborns, infants, and young children to launch at health facilities in Machakos and Bungoma counties.
With proactive screening, the average age of identification of hearing loss will drop. There will likely be a corresponding, increased demand for hearing technology and audiology and therapy services to support this pediatric population. We plan to expand our training curriculum so that additional Kenyan professionals and caregivers, particularly those outside of Nairobi, have the tools and knowledge needed to respond.
OUR IMPACT
The end goal we share with our Kenyan partners is that pediatric ear and hearing care services will be fully integrated into the Kenya health care system. Families throughout Kenya should be able to access the trained professionals and complete Continuum of Care in their local communities that they need to help their babies and young children to listen, speak, and thrive.
Please enjoy our professionally produced video for a perspective of our work in Kenya: