July is Fibroids Awareness Month. If that is news to you, you have just met the problem. This month passes every year in Kenya without a ministerial statement, screening drives, or a budget line. Yet fibroids are among the most common gynaecological conditions in the world. The UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists notes that up to two-thirds of women will develop at least one in their lifetime, with international estimates putting the figure at 70 to 80 percent by the age of 50. The silence is not an oversight. It is a choice about whose suffering counts.
The default fibroids treatment that costs women their fertility
Yet we barely measure the problem. One of the few pieces of Kenyan data we have, a 2024 study at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu, shows how little fibroid research exists in this country. The study found that in a single gynaecology ward, the most common treatment — used in 42 percent of cases — was total abdominal hysterectomy (removal of the uterus). Cases peaked among women aged 35 to 39, many of whom had never had children. For a non-cancerous condition, the default treatment too often costs a woman the chance to ever carry a child.
That default is not an accident. It is financed. The Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) covers the standard surgeries — myomectomy and hysterectomy — while minimally invasive alternatives such as uterine fibroid embolisation and high-intensity focused ultrasound are largely excluded and payable out of pocket. The state will fund the scalpel, but not the technologies that could spare a woman from it. Her treatment is determined less by her diagnosis than by her bank balance.
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In March this year, nominated Senator Hamida Kibwana rose in the Senate to raise the alarm on fibroids. She asked the Standing Committee on Health to produce national prevalence data, outline the Ministry of Health’s plans for public awareness and early screening, clarify research funding, and detail exactly what fibroid treatment the Social Health Insurance Fund covers. She noted that treatment costs of between KES 100,000 and 500,000 put care beyond the reach of many women.
Kenya has made important commitments to universal health coverage and women’s health, yet uterine fibroids remain largely invisible in national policy. They receive little attention in public health campaigns, are absent from routine screening programmes, and are rarely discussed as part of reproductive health planning. The result is that many women seek care only after symptoms have become severe — when heavy bleeding, debilitating pain, anaemia, infertility, or pressure on surrounding organs have already disrupted their lives.
What Kenyan women actually need
Fibroids Awareness Month is the deadline for answers. July is now half gone, and Kenyan women are still waiting. Kenyan women do not need another hashtag. We need the Health Committee and the Ministry to answer Senator Kibwana’s questions and deliver three things:
Data: A national effort to measure fibroid prevalence and treatment outcomes. The government cannot fix what it refuses to count.
Coverage: SHIF must cover the full range of fibroid treatments, including minimally invasive options like embolisation and focused ultrasound — not only major surgery.
Also Read: Why Investing in Women Means Protecting Their Reproductive Health
Pathways: Clear clinical protocols so that a woman presenting repeatedly with heavy bleeding and pelvic pain is properly investigated instead of being dismissed or treated symptom by symptom.
More than a women’s health issue
Fibroids are not simply a women’s health issue. They are a health financing issue, a workforce issue, an economic issue, and a question of equity. Every delayed diagnosis means lost productivity. Every unnecessary hysterectomy represents a missed opportunity to preserve fertility and quality of life. Every woman forced to borrow money for treatment exposes the gap between Kenya’s promise of universal health coverage and the reality patients face.
What this July should deliver
This July, Fibroids Awareness Month should not end with social media posts and purple ribbons. It should end with a commitment: to count women, to cover the care they need, and to ensure that Kenyan women’s treatment is determined by clinical need — not their ability to pay.
This article was written by Wendy Achieng, a communications professional, writer, and human rights advocate.
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