Our impact
AMREF’s 50+ year track record demonstrates commitment to and success in achieving our three-pronged goal of: improving disease prevention; promoting health; and increasing access to health services. In meeting this goal, AMREF advances the physical, social, and economic wellbeing of Africans.
Our pursuit of better health for Africans is guided by our strategic priorities – building capacity, partnering with communities, and informing health practice and policy. These priorities are evidence-based, outcome-oriented pillars that support our overarching goal. They compel outreach that is broad, deep, and relevant.
AMREF’s “big picture” impact is significant, for example:
- Since our founding, AMREF’s doctors have performed well over 100,000 major operations and our programs have trained over 500,000 health workers that reach almost 60 million African people.
- Continent-wide, over 45,000 emergency airlifts and over 60,000 live-saving surgeries have been performed by AMREF’s Flying Doctors.
- Every year, AMREF distributes over 100,000 insecticide-treated nets to pregnant women and children – the populations most susceptible to malaria. Our net distribution amounts to 3,000 lives saved each day.
- AMREF's Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Education (PHASE) program, a primary school curriculum designed to reduce water-related illness, reached 74,000 children across 247 schools with such effectiveness that Kenya's Ministry of Health formally adopted it as a national school standard. The true number of beneficiaries is far greater due to the ripple effect of the program; participants share their new knowledge with friends and family. Through partnerships and sharing of best practices, the PHASE program has been replicated across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
- AMREF established an eLearning program to elevate the skill level of Kenya’s 20,000 nurses to that of a certified RN. This model, which is being replicated in other East African countries, is one of the most efficient and innovative ways to address Africa’s health worker shortage.
- Across Africa, AMREF is strengthening the quality and reliability of health laboratories by training technicians, outfitting them with the necessary diagnostic equipment, and implementing regional quality assurance standards. These activities lead to more accurate and early-stage diagnoses that result in lives saved.
Behind these “big picture” impacts are hundreds of successes achieved through community-specific projects. These projects consist of a powerful, impact-generating combination of prevention, education, and treatment programming, customized to address each region’s most critical issues.
Evidence of recent project-specific successes includes:
Improved disease prevention
- 30,000 Ethiopians now have access to clean water and sanitation systems in the form of 19 kiosks, each equipped with toilets, showers, and taps and managed by an oversight committee.
- 500,000+ Tanzanians have utilized our voluntary HIV/AIDS counseling and testing sites.
Partnering with communities to build health care capacity and promote wellness
- 271 clinical officers have received certification at Southern Sudan’s Miridi Health Training Institute that was salvaged by AMREF after years of civil destroyed the country’s health system. Currently, there are 192 rising professionals enrolled in this AMREF -funded and -designed program which graduates and average of 50 licensed clinical officers annually. To date, 70% of health workers in South Sudan can be linked to AMREF’s training program.
- 300 mother coordinators in Afar, Ethiopia, are trained to educate their communities about malaria prevention and detection strategies.
- 630 school teachers in Mwanza, Tanzania, are trained to raise awareness about adolescent sexual health; 227 health workers are credentialed to offer family planning, childbirth, and STI services tailored to adolescents.
- 1,000 Kenyan surgeons and care providers are trained in Cleft lip and palate treatment.
Increased access to health care services
- 1,000 Ethiopians underwent trachoma operations to prevent blindness.
- 1,000 HIV/AIDS patients in Kibera, Kenya are receiving anti-retrovirals; 394 patients were treated for TB; and 40 children with HIV/AIDS received specialized therapies this past year.
- 100 visits by AMREF’s Flying Doctors to 70 hospitals in 8 countries resulted in over 9,000 Cleft lip and palate reconstructive surgeries in 2009.
Conducting research to inform health practice and policy
- Southern Sudan’s Ministry of Health consulted with AMREF in designing its national health care plan and strategy.
- Kenya’s Ministry of Health standardized AMREF’s Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Education (PHASE) program, integrating it in the national school curriculum.
- Tanzania’s Government formally adopted AMREF’s Angaza HIV/AIDS Counseling and Testing Project as its national model for STI prevention and treatment.
- Uganda’s Government scaled AMREF’s community-based anti-malaria campaign to reach 78 districts countrywide.
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89 % of our expenditures go directly to our life-saving programs in Africa. 
