Clinical Officer - Kenya

Kenya

As a British colony in 1928, Kenya started training a select group of natives to practice medicine and care for the local population who were increasingly accepting and seeking western medicine. After independence from Britain in 1963, medical training in Kenya initially adopted the four-year medical school system used in the US rather than the six-year UK model. This was heavily influenced by The Kennedy Airlifts which followed initial funding by the African-American Students Foundation (AASF) in 1959 and led to hundreds of young Kenyan students getting scholarships to study in American institutions: These students came back to Kenya after their studies and joined the civil service in the early post-independence Kenya. By 1967 the structure and duration of medical training was similar to the US MD training. It did not however become a post-graduate course. When the University of Nairobi split from the University of East Africa and became the first university in Kenya in 1970, it continued to teach the six-year British degree which necessitated the creation of two statutory bodies, the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board in 1978 and the Clinical Officers Council in 1989, to license and regulate the practice of the two medical professionals. Instead of residency for the clinical officer, the higher diploma in paediatrics, ophthalmology and other specializations was introduced in the late 1970s as a post-basic course for those who had worked for three or more years and, after ten years of service, one became a senior clinical officer and qualified for a license to practice under his own name as a private medical practitioner. The Bachelor of Clinical Medicine and Community Health degree was later introduced in 2006 to enhance the clinical officer's scholarly output and personal development.

Clinical officers continue to play a central role in Kenya's medical sector today. There were 8,600 clinical officers on the register in 2010 compared to 7,100 medical officers. They are trained by the universities, the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC), St. Mary's School of Clinical Medicine and other private institutions. The Ministry of Health, through the Clinical Officers Council (COC) regulates their training and practice, accredits training institutions, and approves the syllabi of the universities and colleges. The Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC), also under the Ministry of Health, has campuses in regional teaching hospitals and trains the majority of clinical officers. St. Mary's School of Clinical Medicine and St. Mary's Mission Hospital in Mumias, owned by the Roman Catholic diocese of Kakamega, was the first private institution to train clinical officers. It admits students who got the minimum university entry grade in high school and have passed a written examination and oral interview. The students sit the same examination as their counterparts at the KMTC and are examined by consultants from the public service.