A health clinic in Nairobi’s suburb has vowed to change the region’s health delivery system by building a chain of outpatient medical records called Pend Health, focused on making women’s health care affordable in East Africa.
“Penda Health will offer these women a caring health provider that will deliver quality care at a low price,” Nicholas Sowden, a co-founder, said.
Penda Health, comprising a medical records system designed to help health workers track the patient health history in the entire country, aims at monitoring stock management system to help clinics manage their drugstores as well as avoid unscrupulous staff from tampering with the stock.
Speaking to HumanIPO, Sowden said: “A large number of clinics in the country use notebooks and foolscaps to record patients medical history, which becomes a problem when a patient loses it or visits another health centre without it. Since most clinics do not share patient’s medical history, it becomes hard to know if the patient is telling the truth or not.”
Nicholas said another major issue is when clinics store drugs in bulk and fail to monitor their expiry dates that in times of emergency might be given to patients erroneously. He added it is even a big issue if some of the stores clerks are dishonest, and keeping track of the stock can also be a big issue.
According to Stephanie Koczela, also a co-founder for Penda Health, they were moved by the unaffordable health facilities particularly for women and children from the low and middle-class families in the society.
Stephanie noted they wanted to set up a family planning unit in Kenya in 2011 but after the field survey, decided to go into affordable health for women and Kids.
This followed a research done by Beatrice Ngoche, a health professional and community organizer with Simama Pamoja, on more than 1000 women in the area.
“Penda Health will bring the high quality scientifically proven methods of service delivery currently available to upper class Kenyans to middle and low income Kenyans. We are seeking to raise US$150,000 series A financing even as our more than 660 customers per month pay for the services. US$50,000 will be spent on hardware costs and $100,000 in working capital. Their second health centre is to be launched in May and in five years, PHC wants to go East Africa with nearly 250 branches,” Sowden concluded.
Since the launching in February this year, Penda Health has served over 200 cases involving paying patients and a profit ofmore than Ksh 80,000.
The clinic has in addition a dedicated hotline (07307337992) where patients can call the clinic for free.
