Emergency Care Capacity and Accessibility for Non-Communicable Diseases in Kenyan EDs: A Regional Analysis
Abstract
ABSTRACT:
Background: Emergency Departments (EDs) are crucial to managing non-communicable diseases (NCDs), a leading cause of death, yet there is limited information about the capacity and accessibility of emergency care in Kenya.
Methods: Using data from Project 47, a national dataset on EDs, we conducted a secondary analysis to assess capacity for NCD care, as guided by the WHO Package for Essential NCD Interventions for Primary Care (WHO PEN).
Results: Of the 186 facilities included in the assessment, 45.7% (n=85) had a designated ED. ED capacity, distribution of facilities, number of patients seeking care, and WHO PEN indicators varied by Regional Economic Bloc (REB). Mount Kenya and Aberdares (MKAREB) and Lake Region (LREB) REBs included the greatest number of facilities and served the largest patient catchment areas nationally (8.5 million and 17.8 million, respectively). Key diagnostic tools and treatments were inconsistently available, with ECGs lacking outside of Nairobi (100% of EDs in Nairobi, 14.8% to 33.3% outside of Nairobi, P=0.1021). Oxygen was consistently available in only 44.8% of facilities in FCDC-Pwani, 59.3% in LREB, and 42.9% in NAKAEB, highlighting significant regional gaps, despite the LREB serving a disproportionately larger patient population. Glucometers, similarly, were universally available (100%) in Nairobi, but only available variably in other regional blocs (51.7% to 93.3%, P=0.001474).
Conclusion: Major disparities exist in emergency care…
Read the paper
Related studies
- The Matrisome: In Silico Definition and In Vivo Characterization by Proteomics of Normal and Tumor Extracellular Matrices
- The Escherichia coli MG1655 in silico metabolic genotype: Its definition, characteristics, and capabilities
- In silico pharmacology for drug discovery: methods for virtual ligand screening and profiling
- In silico prediction of splice-altering single nucleotide variants in the human genome
- In silico clinical trials: how computer simulation will transform the biomedical industry
- In silico optimization of a guava antimicrobial peptide enables combinatorial exploration for peptide design
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.