Order of Malta Kenya

It was a balmy 90 degrees when my flight touched down at Lamu airport off the northern coast of Kenya, just sixty miles south of the Somali border on Valentines Day just after midday. This was to be my home for the next two and a half months. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do down here and if indeed there was going to be enough to keep me occupied; little did I know.

My lovely friend Alice Murphy, whom I had been working with at a Mother Teresa home in Ethiopia and is the First Secretary to the Order Of Malta Embassy in Kenya, had introduced me to Dr. Nurein who is in charge and one of only two doctors who works in the huge and massively under-utilised King Fayd hospital on the island. Alice also gave me an introduction to a Spanish girl called Maria who runs Anidan, a local orphanage.

Malteser International, the Order of Malta’s Worldwide Relief, continues to play a central role in providing assistance to the people of Kenya in many different ways.

The Nairobi Slums Project continues to provide testing, diagnosis and treatment for HIV and Tuberculosis in eight slums of Nairobi. With a catchment of 3million people the impact is enormous. The medical professionals in the Health Centres are greatly assisted by the team of 48 Community Health Workers who visit the very sick patients in their homes and spend much time ensuring that all the patients are taking their medication, as well as making sure that community is aware of the symptoms of the diseases and where treatment is available.