Kibera, Kenya, is the largest slum in Africa, and the second largest in the world. With a densely packed population of approximately 1.5 million men, women and children, conditions are life threatening. There is a tremendous need for basic services such as clean water, sanitation, electricity, security and health care. Kibera has more than 150,000 orphaned children, most of whom spend their day competing with stray dogs for scraps of food in sewage piles.

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The challenges facing this community are overwhelming, including: poverty, unemployment, violent crime, toxic environmental health hazards, severe malnutrition, widespread teenage pregnancies and sexual abuse, STDs, substance abuse, mental health; tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, severe diarrhea, widespread diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, emphysema and other non-communicable diseases, parasitic and bacterial gastrointestinal infections.

 

Access to healthcare services in Kibera are practically non-existent, with a severe shortage of health facilities, equipment, medication and qualified healthcare workers. The few public healthcare facilities currently there are physically and financially stressed, preventing them from adequately serving this community. Destitute residents cannot afford the costs of treatment or transportation to outside health facilities.

 

These uninhabitable conditions are exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions. Residents must pay for clean drinking water and to use a public bathroom. There are no government public services for sanitation, police or fire. “Homes” are built from scrap wood, cardboard and corrugated sheet metal. An 8’x10’ one-room structure, with dirt floors, no privacy, and no running water or toilet facility, often houses a family of six people. Cooking is done with a primitive stove and charcoal for fuel. Carcinogenic smoke from the charcoal fills their homes when cooking while toxic fumes from burning heaps of plastic fill the air throughout the community. This community is in dire need of medical and dental services, health care workers and volunteers.