Duke Students Launch Childcare Center in Kenya

In the waiting room at Lumumba Sub-County Hospital in Kisumu, Kenya, it’s common to see young mothers soothing fussy infants or keeping watch on energetic toddlers. But the kids aren’t there to see the doctor. The mother is, and often she doesn’t have any option but to bring her children in tow.

Duke students Sydney Chen, Melat Woldetensae and Isabel Siebrecht saw this scene many times while visiting the hospital as part of a Student Research Training (SRT) project in summer 2023. Once, Chen and Woldetensae sat in on a mother receiving treatment for human papillomavirus (HPV) while her child watched.

“Sometimes [HPV treatment] can be painful,” says Chen, a rising senior majoring in international comparative studies and global health. “I can’t imagine how a child would feel hearing their mom cry from that.”

That gave the three students an idea. “We saw the chance to reduce one obstacle out of many that exists,” says Woldetensae, a rising senior majoring in biology.

In May, they helped launch a childcare center at the hospital, which now allows mothers to drop off their kids while attending appointments. Staffed by local community health promoters, the Jali Watoto Childcare Centre – Swahili for “take care of children” -- can serve up to 100 families.

The students’ SRT project focused on refining a mobile health app used by community health volunteers to aid HPV screening.  Untreated HPV is the main cause of cervical cancer, which remains a significant threat in low- and middle-income countries due to a lack of widespread testing and treatment.

But the team recognized that women’s responsibilities to take care of children could also be a barrier to HPV prevention and treatment. Without access to childcare, women may delay medical appointments or skip them entirely.

Chen and Woldetensae spent two weeks in Kisumu in May to train staff and prepare the center space, which offers books, games, toys and interactive mats. They have secured funding through Duke grants and other sources to run the program for a year, and they are committed to finding additional funding to grow the program in the future. The pair created a GoFundMe page for people to donate in support of Jali Watoto.  

Another key to the program’s sustainability is having local staff providing the childcare service, the students say.

“We wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be implementing a random program that wouldn’t make sense,” says Woldetensae, a rising senior studying biology with a minor in computational biology. “Our plan was to never have U.S. health workers do this program. [We wanted community members] from Kisumu and surrounding communities who know how to care for children and communicate with local women.”

Megan Huchko, M.D., director of the DGHI Center for Global Reproductive Health and the students’ mentor for the SRT project, says she is impressed by the team’s initiative in planning the childcare program.

“Although they thought about the plan while they were in Kenya, much of the work was done over the course of the school year while they were at Duke,” Huchko says. “They were incredibly independent in developing and maintaining the relationships with the [Kisumu] team.”

That teamwork is one reason the students are hopeful the program will continue even after they graduate. 

The most important aspects of global health – sustainability, utility and accessibility – all come from the collaboration you establish with the community,” Chen says. “Melat and I may be the face of this, but the body of this project is everyone who helped.”