Seniors Health Program

The table indicates the mortality rate of our beneficiaries from inception.

The aging population faces a set of health challenges which is highly linked to long term physical and mental disability and a number of long term chronic conditions that will likely increase personal care needs.

While serving seniors through the seniors feeding program, it is evident that the health particularly of an aging population is integral to their wellbeing. We have witnessed the mortality rate among our seniors continue to rise over the years especially during the Covid 19 pandemic, as well as the number of bedridden beneficiaries. Majority of these seniors are unable to afford healthcare let alone food.

It is for this reason that we aim to establish long term health interventions for our beneficiaries.

We organized free medical camps from 2016-2019 for senior citizens in Isiolo County to alleviate health complaints and find out the prevalent disease among this population.

These camps provided a range of services including triage, consultation, laboratory, pharmacy, X-ray, and ultrasound. Additionally, we partnered with like-minded organizations to conduct targeted interventions such as eye surgical camp for seniors.

Some of our major footprint in this sector include:

We organized 3 elderly medical camps in 2016, 2017 and 2019. Each year, the number of seniors attending the camp increased which also led to improved healthcare services.
We organized 1 eye surgical camp in 2018 where 911 patients received eye treatment with 191 cataract surgeries. This was a huge milestone given that it is estimated that the average cost of Small incision cataract surgery with implantation for one eye is between Kes 50,000 – 80,000.
We are contributing towards attaining Sustainable Development Goal 3 of good health and wellbeing.

The Covid-19 pandemic presented a significant challenge to our medical camps as restrictions on group gatherings hindered service delivery to seniors in need. Consequently, we had to rethink our approach to healthcare delivery for seniors.
Medical camps act as band aids rather than a long term solution to affordable healthcare. These camps have very little to long term impact when it comes to improving the overall health of seniors.

Our seniors are in need of constant intervention from medical professionals, who can offer round the clock care with access to specialized equipment when needed.

As a result, we are currently implementing a pilot project by registering some beneficiaries with the National Healthcare Insurance Fund (NHIF) so that they can access medical attention that covers consultation, diagnosis, access to specialized equipment and medication costs.

However, we lack the funds to ensure that all our beneficiaries are covered under NHIF.

We call upon like-minded individuals, organizations and governments to support our efforts in promoting good health and well-being of our seniors.