KENYA

The MENTOR Initiative’s Response

Emergency Flood response brought the MENTOR team into Kenya in 2007 where they have been operating in both North Eastern Province and Western Province to assist displaced, host and refugee communities to reduce the burden of malaria.

North Eastern Province

The MENTOR Initiative first responded in January 2007 after El Nino caused severe flooding ravaging the districts of Garissa and Tana River. Over 100,000 were displaced when the Tana River’s banks overflowed and flood waters pushed the communities surrounding Fafi out of their homes. An entire section of the overpopulated Dadaab refugee camps was washed out leaving some 30,000 vulnerable Somali refugees without any form of protection. In order to mitigate a malaria epidemic amongst those at risk emergency stocks of Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS), LLINs, and case management supplies were brought into the country and deployed immediately.

Communities were taught how to implement IRS campaigns to protect the entire community, and LLINs were distributed as a supplementary tool. Ensuring that the health services could deal with the caseload required scaling up and training of those providing services and providing them with the tools to accurately diagnose and treat malaria cases. Of challenge was accessing those in remote locations and nomadic populations where roads were washed out and almost unpassable.

In 2008 another flash flood hit the northern part of the province in Mandera District. MENTOR responded again, in this highly volatile part of the country.  A primarily Kenyan Somali area of the country, this area had seen kidnappings of internationals by Al Shabaab crossing into the country. Clan fighting in the region compounded the insecurity and made implementation of activities all the more difficult for malaria control activities.

Western Province

In September 2007 flooding in Budalangi District on the shores of Lake Victoria caused the dike on the Nzoia River to break and flood the lower half of the district displacing 10,000 people. A repeat of this happened in 2008. In this malaria endemic area, increased risk of infection due to lack of functioning health facilities and exposure with lack of shelter alerted the MENTOR team to respond in both situations. A full coverage IRS campaign covered those living on the south of the dike and emergency stocks of case management supplies were deployed. Mass education of the population alerted the population to their increased risk and the need to utilize the prevention tools and health facilities. The MENTOR team is closing its emergency operations at the end of 2009 having evaluated the current health infrastructure with operational research on case management delivery in the region.