Inside UN agenda to cushion 10m Kenyans against Covid-19

The United Nations has backed Kenya’s response to Covid-19 with personal protective equipment and other medical supplies for frontline health workers and launched a fundraising appeal to cushion millions of vulnerable Kenyans against the impact of the pandemic.

Siddharth Chatterjee, who as the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya leads 27 UN agencies based in the country, spoke to the Business Daily about the institution’s role in the battle against the worst global public health crisis of our time, his optimism for Kenya’s socioeconomic future and how the country can reap the demographic dividend.

HOW IS THE UN HELPING KENYA TO CONTAIN THE SPREAD OF CORONAVIRUS AND TO DEAL WITH THE SECONDARY IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC?

The UN family in Kenya has deployed over 80 UN staff and volunteers to bolster the Government of Kenya’s capacity to respond to the pandemic.

The UN has procured and supplied PPE kits, testing kits, masks and other medical supplies needed by health workers. From within the UN Development Assistance Framework to Kenya, the UN has redeployed $45 million from its ongoing programmes to support Kenya’s Covid-19 response.

Together with the Government of Kenya and our humanitarian partners we have launched a Flash Appeal for $267.5 million to meet the needs of 10 million of the most vulnerable people in Kenya.

We know that Covid-19 will not only stretch the current health and economic system, but that the effects will continue to reverberate long after the virus is defeated. We must look at how best to retool and repurpose Kenyan industry to respond to local and global health needs where demand has outstripped supplies.

I see huge opportunities for Kenya to bridge the supply chain gap. The UN family in Kenya is working closely with the Government of Kenya to look at the socioeconomic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as working with the Ministry of Industrialisation to look at how we can kick-start initiatives of local production of health supplies not only for the current pandemic, but who knows, when the next pandemic strikes.

YOU ONCE SAID THAT ATTAINING UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE (UHC) IS A SUBSTANTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA. IS THE UN COMMITTED TO SUPPORTING KENYA’S EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE UHC?

In Kenya, illness can mean financial ruin. Every year, nearly one million Kenyans are pushed below the poverty line and remain poor as a result of healthcare expenses. Ill health is a substantial burden not only on Kenyan families, but also on the country’s economic growth.

Approximately four out of every five Kenyans have no access to medical insurance, so the cruel reality is that most are just an accident or illness away from destitution. To its credit, the Kenyan government is taking steps towards reducing these inequalities.

Payments for primary and maternal health services in public facilities have been abolished, resulting in increased utilisation and improved outcomes, particularly among the poorest.

Our vision for Kenya is that no family will be forced by poverty to miss out on seeking medical services. We wish to see increased investment in preventive care and primary health.

Diverting cash away from the 60 percent of the health budget that currently goes to curative care will pay dividends. Better primary care reduces ill-health and catches disease at an earlier stage, when treatment is cheaper and more effective.

It also frees up resources to expand insurance coverage for the poor.

This is why our SDG Partnership Platform is coordinating public and private responses in support of the public health window of the Big Four Agenda. We want to see innovative approaches helping us to get basic health care to more families.

Technology can process claims and enable healthcare consumers and providers to interact more efficiently, while offering more customised products to people of all incomes.

Efficient storage and sharing of patient data could reduce the cost of care by, for instance, tracing false claims, preventing repeat tests, or avoiding misdiagnosis.

A case in point is the strong PPP established in 2015 by six private sector companies (Philips, Merck Sharp & Dohme-MSD, GlaxoSmithKline-GSK, Safaricom, Kenya Health Care Federation and Huawei) to improve maternal health in historically marginalised counties.

This initiative — targeting Mandera, Marsabit, Migori, Isiolo, Lamu and Wajir and spearheaded by the Government of Kenya and the UN — has yielded positive health outcomes.

IN 2016, THE UNITED NATIONS (UN) APPOINTED YOU A RESIDENT COORDINATOR OF ITS ACTIVITIES IN KENYA. IT HAS BEEN ABOUT FOUR YEARS. WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS?

I lead one of the finest UN country teams, and a lot of what has been achieved has been a result of great great team work. But let me summarise a few concrete areas of success;

Under the leadership of the Government of Kenya we launched the first cross border initiative between Kenya and Ethiopia in the Moyale region, to reduce conflict, advance peace and development and support better cross border trade and prevention of violent extremism and conflicts.

This initiative has been assessed by the UN University in Japan as a global best practice. We have a similar initiative along the Kenya-Uganda border in the Karamoja region in 2019.

The Government of Kenya and UN Kenya public private partnerships platform has brought a range of companies, foundations and philanthropies, that are united to advance Kenya’s Big 4 development agenda.

The platform, launched during the UN General Assembly in 2017 by Kenya’s former foreign minister Amina Mohamed, has won global recognition of how the UN in Kenya is adapting novel approaches to leapfrog development.

In 2017 during the droughts, the UN in Kenya launched a Flash Appeal and raised over $100 million to support the government’s efforts to mitigate the egregious effects of the disaster.

The UN continues to support of the government in responding to the floods and locust invasion.

Through the UN Development Assistance Framework we are working on the Big Four Agenda, we are accelerating initiatives that will give the country respectable scores by 2030 in key sectors including health, education, employment, agriculture, affordable housing, energy, infrastructure and the environment.

Throughout the country there are signposts of progress: maternal and child mortality are down, devolution is bringing development to what were once considered remote areas and school enrolment rates are rising.

We have also increased our engagement with the Silicon Valley in the USA to harness big data, technology and innovation which is crucial given the enormity of the challenges of Agenda 2030.

KENYA, LIKE THE REST OF AFRICA, IS EXPERIENCING A THE YOUTH BULGE. HOW CAN KENYA REAP THEDEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND?

Today, youth form two-thirds of Kenya’s population, many of them unemployed. There are eight dependents for every 10 working Kenyans, meaning that the average worker will very often have little left to save or invest for growth.

Fortunately, Kenya and other African countries only need to learn from others who have benefited from the demographic dividend. The demographic dividend can be realised through a number of steps.

First, improvements in health and nutrition status, especially of girls, women and children, will contribute to a decrease in the number of children born to each family, as survival improves.

Reductions in fertility coupled with child and maternal mortality declines are all associated with greater power for women to make decisions about how many children they want and how to raise them.

As women cease spending their most productive years having and raising children they can then enter the workforce and contribute to economic production.

The second step is investment in the education of youth. Appropriate education and skills will enable youth to participate in the economy and provide needed labour for its growth.

The third step is to have an economic environment where the educated youth can find well-paid, decent jobs.

Economic policies must target job creation in areas that have potential for longer term returns, including technical and vocational education, agriculture and technology.

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Investments in health, education and economic policies must then be underpinned by good governance, the exercise of public authority which entails adherence to the rule of law and enhancement of human rights applied universally.

By ensuring healthy, educated, productive populations, we have a chance at all of making the Kenyan dream of a prosperous middle to high income country a reality in our lifetime.

We must remember that this is only a window of opportunity, which shuts in an average period of 30 years. If Kenya’s does not act, the demographic dividend risks becoming a demographic disaster, since large numbers of unemployed, frustrated and unemployable youth fall prey to the blandishments and falsehoods spread by extremists and fanatic groups.

NAIROBI IS AT THE BRINK CHARACTERIZED BY POOR ECONOMY, TRANSPORT, SLUMS AMONG OTHERS. WHAT SHOULD KENYA DO TO ENSURE SUCCESSFUL URBAN TRANSFORMATION?

Urbanisation becomes a problem only where urban planning is poor. The challenge for Kenya is that towns are grappling with issues of poverty, environmental degradation, stretched social services and insecurity.

So for most towns a painful picture is that of slums and high population density.

We need innovative thinking to be able to build green cities and towns that support positive economic, social, and environmental links.

We need to reduce vulnerabilities for the poor in towns.

That is why our current UNDAF has a focus on Population, Urbanization and Housing, with various UN agencies having programmes to support the government to address challenges such as capacity to generate quality population data, to develop urban development plans, sustainable housing policies, social physical infrastructure that improve access to quality, affordable and adequate housing focusing on informal settlements and slum upgrading.

Our work in this area is led by UN-Habitat, the agency tasked with assisting national programmes relating to human settlements through the provision of capital and technical assistance.

Unmanaged rapid urbanization can be a problem in very many ways. We are now seeing how urbanization is leading to human interference with the ecosystems.

We are exploiting forests at a calamitous rate, eating away into the traditional buffer zones that once separated humans from animals, and from the pathogens that they carry.

Increasing urbanisation means higher population density, enabling the diseases to spread more rapidly and extensively, as evidenced by exponential spread of Covid-19.

Without appropriate planning, design, and investment in the development of sustainable cities, a growing number of people will continue to face unprecedented negative impacts, not only of climate change but also of reduced economic growth, quality of life, and increased social instability.