A total of 626,621 patients with high blood pressure and diabetes missed treatment in the 2024/2025 financial year due to insufficient funding, particularly for essential medications, according to performance data from the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) Prevention and Control programme.
Essential medicines used to manage these conditions include amlodipine, losartan, enalapril, hydrochlorothiazide and nifedipine for hypertension and metformin, insulin and glibenclamide for diabetes.
This marked one of the steepest treatment gaps recorded for these two chronic conditions in recent years. Of the patients affected, 514,167 were hypertensive patients. The unit had planned to treat 1,107,365 hypertensive patients during the year, but only managed to reach 593,198.
This represented a sharp reversal from the previous two years, when the programme had exceeded its goals. In 2022/23, the unit reached 513,805 patients against a planned target of 1,100,000. In 2023/24, it surpassed its target of 350,000 by treating 411,627 hypertensive patients.
Programme remarks attributed the earlier success to increased public awareness, but the shortfall in 2024/25 was attributed to a lack of funding, particularly for medication.
‘Targets for the financial year 2022/23 and 2023/24 were surpassed due to increased awareness. The target was not achieved in 2024/25 due to a lack of funding, particularly for medication,’ the report read.
Additionally, 112,454 of the missed cases in 2024/25 were diabetes patients. The programme had targeted 383,246 diabetic patients for treatment, but only 270,792 were reached.
This shortfall follows a pattern of underperformance in diabetes care over the past three financial years.
In 2022/23, the unit treated only 179,028 of the planned 226,310 patients, and in the following year, this figure was 220,036 against a target of 250,000.
‘Targets for financial year 2022/23 and 2023/24 were not met due to low awareness levels and poor reporting. The target was not achieved in 2024/25 due to a lack of funding, particularly for medication,’ it read.
The NCD Prevention and Control Unit cited inadequate funding for medicines as the main obstacle to achieving its targets and undoing the progress made in the two preceding financial years.
While the programme did not specify how much funding was lacking for these medicines, the shortfall reflects a broader financing crisis at the national medicines supplier during the same period.
During the financial year ending June 2025, the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) fulfilled only 41 percent of orders placed by facilities, falling far short of its 90 percent target.
At the same time, the Ministry of Health had requested an additional Sh5 billion from the Treasury to help Kemsa restock, but only Sh1.5 billion was approved in the supplementary budget for the year.
For the current financial year, the Treasury has allocated Kemsa Sh20.9 billion, which is expected to help clear supplier debts, stabilise the supply chain and take over the procurement responsibilities that were previously covered by donor-funded health commodity programmes.
Government procurement prices show that amlodipine 5 mg costs approximately Sh15 per month when purchased in bulk for public hospitals, while a telmisartan-amlodipine combination costs around Sh518 per month.
In retail pharmacies, patients typically pay around Sh150 a month for amlodipine, while losartan 50 mg can cost approximately Sh1,260 monthly.
Patients with diabetes who require insulin pay about Sh800-Sh1,100 for a 10 ml vial of Mixtard 30/70, which is one of the most expensive commonly used medicines for chronic disease management.
National surveys estimate that between 24.5 percent and 28.6 percent of Kenyan adults have hypertension, meaning that roughly one in four to nearly one in three adults live with the condition.
Meanwhile, diabetes is estimated to affect about three to four percent of adults nationally, equating to over 800,000 people.