The 10 kilometre radius around Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) enclosing Upper Hill, Nairobi West, Hurlingham and crossing over to Parklands area is certainly the epicentre of our medical profession.
It is home to eight of the top 10 private and public hospitals and hosts about 1,000 doctors.
Numerous other specialist private practitioners are also practising in the many upcoming skyscrapers.
The 10 kilometre radius around Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) enclosing Upper Hill, Nairobi West, Hurlingham and crossing over to Parklands area is certainly the epicentre of our medical profession.
It is home to eight of the top 10 private and public hospitals and hosts about 1,000 doctors. Numerous other specialist private practitioners are also practising in the many upcoming skyscrapers.
KNH and Nairobi Hospital, both arguably the foundation stones of our public and private health enterprises respectively are ensconced here. The former, with a 2,000 official bed capacity is a behemoth also doubling as a teaching and referral facility for the University of Nairobi Medical School, Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) Nairobi Campus and a few other training institutions: a marriage of convenience that has run out of time and needs to be brought to an end if each institution is to achieve full potential and efficiency.
Across most of these 10 hospitals, there is construction work ongoing to catch up with the demands placed by a burgeoning city population. The Nairobi Metropolitan Area which they serve is expected to reach eight million dwellers in the next decade.
With these areas already built up, such facilities find themselves boxed-in and forced to utilise high premium real estate for a “non-financially” motivated healthcare business. The result of this expensive real estate acquisition cost is that a premium is passed on to patients.
In Upper Hill, Hurlingham, Parklands and close areas, realtors quote unfathomable amounts for an acre of land. Rental space for offices is also high. As a necessary ingredient for hospitals, adequate land makes a big dent on the entry budgets for health service providers.
But should this be so ?
The future indicates that healthcare costs are rising annually. To tame these, avoidable contributing factors need to be eliminated. What is emerging clearly is that the city planning unit was caught out for a long time and it is high time health system planners begin thinking of our future infrastructural needs.
Across the Eastlands which carries the bulk of Nairobi’s population, public health facilities are housed on no more than an eighth of an acre with some on solitary buildings set up in the 70s.
A survey of 20 health facilities under the jurisdiction of the Nairobi County government and the defunct NCC shows the lack of foresight meant no future expansion space was allocated. The same applies for private enterprises with majority being premised on converted residential units.
Could a policy to identify and preserve space for future health service providers address this? If it is also designed to leverage on synergistic potential as well as offer thousands of trainee medics peripheral “teaching hospitals” that will be good.
