Diabetes awareness and peer education, Kenya

Objectives

The burden of diabetes is a key problem in Kenya. Especially the lack of early diagnosis is a major problem and is among other things caused by a low awareness of diabetes at community level. Furthermore there is a lack of educated personnel which are causing worsen course of disease and high rates of complications

The aim of this project is to create awareness, empower and mobilise people with diabetes to take active control of their disease. The aim is to establish and support peer education programme, diabetes support groups, train and empower people living with diabetes and their families in 15 counties in Kenya.

Approach

The project runs over a 3-year period and covers several activities where Kenya Defeat Diabetes Association (KDDA), the Ministry of Health, the Diabetes Management, and Information Centre and local partners are participating. The following will be implemented:

- A training curriculum will be developed and reviewed to facilitate the training of Trainers of Trainees (TOTs) and peer educators.

-Planning meetings at the national and county levels will be organized.

- A TOTs training workshop will be held for leaders of already established diabetes support groups from the project target counties.

-Stakeholders of the project together with local diabetes support groups will carry out camps to create diabetes awareness at community level.

- The TOTs in collaboration with KDDA will be training and supervising peer educators and establish new support groups.

- The KDDA will reach out to the community and identify new cases of diabetes and establish support groups that will be linked to health facilities.

Lastly various information, education and communication materials will be sourced from already developed material to the local support groups at community level.

Results at completion

• Establishment of more than 30 support groups
• Strengthening of more than 400 existing support groups
• Training of 60 Trainers of Trainers in diabetes prevention, control and patient empowerment
• Training of 576 peer educators
• Education of more than 120,000 people on diabetes management
• 11 awareness camps and 63 outreach camps organised reaching more than 200,000 people