NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 20 — Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco) Mathare Clinic is the winner of this year’s prestigious Excellence in Leadership in Family Planning award.
The clinic was awarded during the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) held in Pattaya City, Thailand between November 14 and 17, 2022.
The conference brought together over 3500 in-person and digital delegates from Asia, Latina America, and Africa.
Shofco emerged top in the organization level category after demonstrating its efforts to offer free family planning services to the most vulnerable slum communities in Nairobi.
According to Shofco Health Director Emma Ingaiza, the clinic has so far reached over 100,000 women and girls with family planning services since its establishment in 2015.
“One of the things that made our case very strong is the ability to integrate access to free family planning services into the other programs within Shofco, for instance, the Gender Based Violence Response, Community Advocacy (Shofco Urban Network), WASH and Education programs.
“This showed that the organisation is taking an integrated approach to tap into women and girls to access family planning services,” Ingaiza, who received the award on behalf of Shofco in Thailand, said.
Shofco Mathare Clinic is a Level III primary healthcare facility that offers free maternal child health, nutrition, outpatient treatment, family planning, TB, and HIV/AIDS testing services, all which fall under health prevention and promotion.
“To date, we have reached to more than 100, 000 women and girls with family planning services since 2015. In the next three years, we want to reach 4.5 million women and girls with family planning services and key messaging,” Ingaiza stated.
The organization plans to expand provision of free family planning services to three more counties — Mombasa, Kisumu and Kakamega — in the next three years.
Healthcare is among Shofco’s seven programs which include Education, GBV Response, Women Empowerment, Community Advocacy, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
The organization has also partnered with other 11 facilities in Nairobi’s informal settlements to offer free family services.
“Through the Challenge Initiative (TCI) our staff members have received immense capacity building by learning from the best practices all over the world. We also want to thank the Government of Kenya which has really believed in private-public partnerships.
“We are encouraging everyone to come on board and help us support in pushing family planning agenda in urban informal settlements and also borrow our model of integrating in other key programs,” she added.
The conference was co-hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.
The event allowed delegates to engage with the latest science, advocacy and knowledge on family planning.
This year’s theme is “Family Planning and Universal Health Coverage: Innovate, Collaborate, Accelerate”.
The participants were expected to ensure that women have access to the methods that meet their needs while championing policies that foster the integration of family planning with other basic health services.
The first Shofco clinic was started in Kibera in 2010 by the organisation’s Founder and CEO Dr. Kennedy Odede with just a handful of staff and volunteers to treat communicable illnesses but by 2014, the number of patients ballooned, necessitating an expansion.
This is how another hospital in Mathare and four satellite clinics in Kibera sub-county came into being.
“The clinics were started from the idea that people should not die because of health care,” Dr. Odede, who was born and bred in Kibera said.
For a community that struggles to afford two meals a day, this is Godsend.
Dr. Odede envisioned serving the slum dwellers but the clinic in Mathare is now providing health solutions to people coming from Kariobangi, Ruaraka and Githurai while those in Kibera get cases from Kawangware, Mukuru and as far as Kiambu and Kitengela.
The award is one among several awards Shofco clinics have won in the recent past.
Shofco clinics have bagged several other accolades including an Award of Excellence in Improving Access to Primary Healthcare Services in 2020, an award in excellence in response to COVID-19 in 2021 and Best NGO Level 2 Health Centre Award in 2022 (Kibera Clinic).
