Naom Monari’s App Disrupts Elderly Home Care in Kenya

By Charles Wachira,

Naom Monari, 30, is the founder of Bena Care Ltd., an award winning  social enterprise located in Kenya that provides clinical and physiotherapy care services to patients inflicted by life  threatening illnesses from the comfort of their homes.With the clients , disproportionately drawn from the country’s elderly caste.

The eureka moment leading  Naom to think of starting the social care service happened while she was working as a nurse student at Gatundu Level 5 Hospital, based in central Kenya in 2016.

Then she realised the medical facility was facing challenges of bed availability and the situation was  further exacerbated  by patients receiving non-urgent  medical care but   were occupying beds.

“  Imagine some of the patients in the wards were simply receiving mundane but necessary services such as wound dressing , bathing or simply taking drugs to manage a condition.While others who were facing life threatening infections  had been abandoned and were  in limbo, with no bed, apparently  available for them,” says Naom.

One day while she was  doing her routine rounds in a ward  she came across a patient who had a diabetic infected foot and who happened to have  hogged a lot of time on a hospital bed.  

She approached his son, who happened to be registered at the hospital as  his nearest of  kin and made a proposal to him.

“ I can take care of your father while he’s home based but at a fee,” he told the son.

The rest, as they say is history, for the idea turned to be seminal as word got round that patients suffering from non-life threatening diseases could receive compassionate,reliable, clinical and supportive care from the comfort of their homes.

And in 2017 , she officially registered BENA  Care Limited , with the brand  name coined from her now eight year old daughters’ name Beata and hers, Naom.

The Organisation, which has a tagline that reads ‘Healthcare at Your Doorstep’  has to date attended to an estimated 6000 patients who are  also offered the opportunity of purchasing homecare equipment on the cheap, for in essence in many instances they  re-purchase the medical contraptions  from  former users but with a caveat that the equipment  has been well-maintained.

It’s standard practice for the care-giver to sign contracts with clients, that guarantees the nurses are licensed and possess a certificate of good conduct , provided by the local police constabulary. There is also an indemnity insurance cover signed , in the event, a nurse misconducts themselves.

“So as to protect our nurses , we insist that they document everything  they do while attending  to a patient , so that in the event of a court case cropping up  the organisation has something tangible to fall back to as a defence,” says Naom.

Fatima Ali Omar, 69, had been in and out of hospital since early 2021.She was admitted at a local private  hospital here in Nairobi , “ while she was very sick from a lung infection” says Lucky Omar, 40, her daughter.

“ But I could tell that she was not receiving the full attention that she was requiring and I was getting  frustrated.Someday while I was in the hospital, I googled for home care hospital services that were located within Nairobi.And I got several organisations but in the end I was convinced Beta Care had what , as a family we were searching for,” says Lucky, who is a business lady based in Eastleigh,located East of the Nairobi’s Central Business District (CBD),which happens to be one of Africa’s biggest retails markets that hosts, the Business Bay Square Mall, boasting 130,000 square metres , making it  the largest mall within the East African region..  

“ BETA Care provides live-in carers who are constantly monitoring the progress of a patient.They create an enabling environment that allows members of a family to pursue their day-to day pursuits with having anxiety their patient is receiving perfunctory service.They also provide one aspect that a lot of caretaking organisations lack, namely dignity for a patient, for the ailing   have to be bathed , taken to the washroom and so on.And the BETA care nurses provide these  delicate services diligently,”says Lucky, who  unfortunately is still mourning  her mother who died mid this May after being under the watch of BETA Care nurses for one and a half years.   

Enter Ali Omar, 72.

He was afflicted by a stroke in 2020.And in his daughter’s telling , Ali went on to suffer a spinal injury which deteriorated  with time as  he ostensibly recuperated at a local hospital here in Nairobi and the hospital fee skyrocketed to Ksh 2 million (US $ 14,430) in today’s exchange rate.

“ As a family  we were stressed , that was a lot of money, yet dad’s was not getting any better.That is when somebody told us about  BETA care, and we gave the organisation a try.And, honestly , the services are fantastic, dad has since become  much better , for he can digest food now, as opposed to the past, when he could not  and the cost has been halved,” says Fatima Ali Omar , 28, the daughter.

Mr Ali Omar, 72. 

If you google to find out how many home care based medical facilities exist in Nairobi alone, one will discover  they are a multitude.

Kenya, happens to be a lower middle income country, with an estimated population of 52 million people. In 2022, 17 percent – that is over 8.9 million people – were living under extreme poverty, mostly in rural areas, according to Statista, an online portal providing data on the global digital economy, industrial sectors, consumer markets, public opinion, media and macroeconomic developments. 

The portal further shows that an estimated 7.8 million Kenyans in rural enclaves lived on less than $1.90 ( Ksh 263 ) daily, a  figure that was 6.5 times higher than that recorded in urban regions.However, the poverty incidence had since declined compared to 2020. 

Says Naom, “ Bena Care  is bridging this gap by providing supportive and clinical care to chronically ill patients in the low income areas.With the main focus being rural Kenya, where a family member may be in  need of long term care , necessitating another family member to step up and to play a caregiving  role.”

Kenya’s  healthcare delivery system is pluralistic with a 50%-50% split between public and private healthcare providers, who are organised into four tiers, namely community, primary care, county referral and national referral hospitals.

“ We have  improved our efficiencies by setting up a healthcare technology app @ benacare, which is  a digital platform  that geomaps nurses and physiotherapists drawn from across the country, who then take care of patients from the comfort of their homes,” says  Naom who bootstrapped the idea of setting up BENA Care to fruition .

The Online platform also links families in need of homecare appliances to families possessing  used equipment.

“ We are planning to replicate this model we are using here in Kenya to other African countries in future.But for now we have a lot of territory to cover here in Kenya for our nurses are found in seven out of the 47 counties found in Kenya,” says Naom who was the winner  of the Waislitz Global Citizen Disruptor Award, a $50,000 prize given to an applicant who has created measurable impact in an innovative way that disrupts the existing systems that allow for extreme poverty to persist in 2024

Keywords:Bena Care Ltd Kenya:Home healthcare services Nairobi:Naom Monari founder:Physiotherapy and clinical care Kenya:Waislitz Global Citizen Disruptor Award 2022