20/08/2025
Curated data.Kenya Kidney_Shaped Mirror.
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Kenya's Kidney-Shaped Mirror
Author image Catherine Maina
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Kenya is in the middle of a health crisis, but you wouldn’t know it from the headlines. Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) doesn’t make the evening news, there are no hashtags, no celebrity fundraisers. It creeps in like an uninvited guest, sits in the corner, and quietly drains lives.
The numbers are grim. Four million Kenyans, that’s about one in ten adults, already have some form of kidney disease. Four million. We like big numbers in Kenya; billions stolen, trillions in debt, and grand projects announced in the billions. Four million people with CKD make no whisper.
CKD is not loud and glamorous like HIV once was, with its donor dollars and billboard campaigns. It doesn’t come wrapped in ribboned pink marches like breast cancer. CKD does not trend. It simply crouches low, patient, waiting, and silently gnawing away at lives with the steady rhythm of a dialysis machine. CKD is our national stalker.
The real plot twist is that most of this kidney disease doesn’t start in the kidneys. It begins with the belt. With the plate. It begins with the quiet triumph of processed sugar, salt, and a sedentary lifestyle made possible by our sudden inability to walk short distances, thanks to the motorcycle invention (known as Nduthi in Kenya).
The Obesity That We Call Prosperity
For centuries, a big belly in Africa was an announcement of wealth, plenty, and prosperity. Thin was for the poor, the hungry, the rural. A gut was an inheritance. A paunch was a dowry. Yet today, even after free education and moderate internet use, many still cling to this historical myth.