Introduction:

Diabetes is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide yet preventable. Complications of undetected and untreated diabetes result in serious human suffering and disability.rnIt negatively impacts on individuals social economic status threatening economic prosperity.

Objectives:

There is a scarcity of data on health system diabetes service readiness and availability inrnKenya which necessitated an investigation into the specific availability and readiness of diabetes services.

Methodology:

cross sectional descriptive study was carried out using the Kenya servicernavailability and readiness mapping tool in 598 randomly selected public health facilities in 12rnpurposively selected counties. Ethical standards outlined in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinkirnand its later amendments were upheld throughout the study. Health facilities were classifiedrninto primary and secondary level facilities prior to statistical analysis using IBM SPSS version 25. Exploratory data analysis techniques were employed to uncover the distributionrnstructure of continuous study variables. For categorical variables descriptive statistics inrnterms of proportions frequency distributions and percentages were used.

Findings:

Results:

Of the 598 facilities visited 83.3 were classified as primary while 16.6 as secondary. A variation in specific diabetes service availability and readiness was depicted in the 12 counties andrnbetween primary and secondary level facilities. Human resource for health reported a lowrnmean availability 46 95 CI 44-48 with any NCDs specialist and nutritionist thernleast carder available. Basic equipment and diagnostic capacity reported a fairly high meanrnreadiness 73 95 CI 71-75 and 64 95CI 60-68 respectively.

Conclusion:

Generallyrnprimary health facilities had low diabetic specific service availability and readiness compared to secondary facilities: capacity to cope with diabetes increased as the level of carernascended to higher levels. Significant gaps were identified in overall availability and readiness in both primary and secondary levels facilities particularly in terms of human resourcernfor health specifically nutrition and laboratory profession.

Author(s):

Focus County(s):

Kitui County

Programme Area(s):

Non-Communicable Diseases

Research Priority Area(s):

Disease Domain(s):

Diabetes

Publication Date: 27.Sep.2023

Conference Title:

Venue: