Kenya has the highest availability of essential medicines to save mothers during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period, a new analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows.
The WHO Maternal Mortality Analytical Fact Sheet 2023 shows that Kenya leads the region with 73 percent availability of essential medicines, followed by Seychelles with 63 percent.
Essential medicines are those that meet the priority health needs of a population and are selected based on criteria such as efficacy, safety, cost, compliance, multiple use, storage, ease of administration, and local availability.
Kenya's Essential Medicines List (EML), which is based on the WHO’s Model Essential Medicines List, guides national drug policy. It details safe and cost-effective medicines that should be widely available and helps the Ministry of Health prioritise funding and support for these commodities.
The latest KEML includes 696 medicines, including priority medicines to save mothers' lives such as heat-stable carbetocin, oxytocin, misoprostol, tranexamic acid, and magnesium sulphate.
"Between 2015 and 2018, in the African Region, the availability of essential medicines was high in Kenya and the Seychelles.
"In Zimbabwe, 48 percent of essential medicines were available; in Malawi, 47 percent in Chad and Liberia, 44 percent in Zambia, 43 percent, and in Niger, 41 percent," the WHO said.
Countries with less than 40 percent availability of essential medicines include Eswatini with 33 percent, Uganda with 32 percent, Sierra Leone with 31 percent, and Burundi with 29 percent.
Extremely low availability of essential medicines was recorded in South Sudan at 14 percent, Mauritania at 19 percent, and the Democratic Republic of Congo at 20 percent.
Despite the availability of medicines, Kenya still has a very high maternal mortality rate, with 503 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020. Between 2017 and 2020, maternal mortality increased by 55 percent.
The high mortality rate is attributed to severe haemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure during pregnancy, complications during childbirth, and unsafe abortion, which account for nearly 75 percent of all maternal deaths.
A June 2023 analysis by Newcastle University and Makerere University highlighted the lack of drug registration in Kenya, which limits access to safe, effective, and affordable essential medicines.
A comparison of the essential medicines list in Kenya with the medicines on the national drug registries found that 28 percent of essential medicines were unregistered.
WHO has urged the Kenyan government to prioritise maternal and newborn health, review policies, guidelines, and programmes, and ensure the availability of emergency obstetric care to curb maternal deaths.
