Kenya School for Integrated Medicine

As many of you may know, I am now Educational Director of the Kenya School for Integrated Medicine, the only full time homoeopathy program outside of South Africa ([Fig. 1]). We have an exciting 5-year project, sponsored through the European Union, to help improve health care in Kenya. In so doing we are introducing homoeopathy and the ideas of integrated medicine into the country. The European Union chose our project as it felt we could help improve health care in a poor part of the country with some of the worst health outcomes.

Fig. 1 Students at the Kenya School for Integrated Medicine.

To get the direct support of the European Union for a homoeopathic project in Africa is a unique opportunity. Nothing else like it exists in the world today but it also brings up unique challenges for us in sustaining our project.

We are now beginning our second year of the project and are focusing on the following goals:

• Supporting 24 community health units as part of the Health Ministry's strategy to improve community health.

• Support the development of digitized health information systems, by supplying smart phones and tablets to health communities in more remote areas. This is a pioneering new model of finding more accurate ways to access important health data throughout the country and is also being pioneered in Asia as well as in Africa.

• Developing six new homoeopathic clinics in the county, liaising with the local health centres and each clinic to support six mobile clinics, giving more people access to homoeopathy and other health skills. We are working directly with the local ministry as part of its on-going public health strategy.

• Train several medical personnel into the basics of homoeopathy and integrated medicine.

• Conduct several operational researches in the community, to show the possible efficacy of homoeopathy for several health conditions.

• Advocate on a national basis for the full inclusion of homoeopathy within Kenyan health care and support the implementation of a new health bill that will lead to the regulation and acceptance of homoeopathy.

Our grant through the European Union has given us the opportunity to embark on the project but we do have to match the funds given to maintain the project. It is vital for us to do this as otherwise the project cannot be sustained for the next 4 years.

We have just launched our new Web site for the trust that supports the school in Kenya. Please go to 4kenyatrust.org to see the work of the school and trust.

Also we are very fortunate to have the support of the American Medical College of Homeopathy and the Phoenix Institute of Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture (PIHMA.edu). Through their Web site we are able to raise tax deductible funds for our work here in Kenya.

Please consider supporting our school and the work we are doing in Kenya. We are at a crucial stage of the project and if we can make the necessary progress this year and raise the necessary funds, we can make the project a great success and a model for homoeopathic education and regulation throughout eastern Africa and beyond.

Thanks so much for your support and I hope all is well.

Please follow the directions below for giving through PIHMA's site: http://pihma-fpre.org/giving- 2.