Our Mission

To eliminate diseases and poverty in neglected communities through targeted investments in population health, ecological interventions and education.

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Our Vision

Disease and Poverty Free Communities

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Our Expertise 

We are a team of experts on public health, neglected tropical diseases, and community organizing.

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Our History 

Our work began in 2011 as an initiative between Northeastern University and the University of Nairobi School of Public Health (UON-SPH). Our goal was to study and alleviate the impact of the severely neglected visceral leishmaniasis (VL), also known as Kala-azar, in Baringo County. Baringo’s 660,000 people are spread across six sub-regions. We have focused our energy on East Pokot, a region about the size of Rhode Island, where the majority of the people are ethnically Pokot. In 2016, we established the Research on Multi-Disease and Educational Services (TERMES) Center in Chemolingot Town and upgraded the Chemolingot Hospital for anchoring our work on VL in Baringo. On July 26, 2019, the TERMES Center and VL treatment services at the Chemolingot Hospital were officially inaugurated by Baringo Governor H.E. Stanley Kiptis together with all local politicians, administrators, and partners. In 2020, our project has been formally incorporated as an NGO: African Centre for Community Investment in Health (ACCIH).

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About Baringo County 

Located in the North Rift Valley, Baringo County is one of 47 counties in Kenya. In the 2019 National Census, Baringo had a population of 666,763 individuals located in six sub-counties. East Pokot/Tiaty West is one of these and constitutes about 41% of the County by land area - occupying 4,524 square kilometers, similar in size to the U.S state of Rhode Island. East Pokot contains a population of 153,000 ethnic Pokot who have rich and complex ritualistic traditions and a long history shaped by resource-based inter-tribal conflicts. The household density and pastoralist livelihood drives exposure to neglected tropical diseases such as visceral leishmaniasis (VL, also known as Kala-azar), snakebites, and trachoma. Our previous research revealed that East Pokot carries over 80% of the VL cases for Baringo. This area has the lowest literacy rate (16%), highest poverty levels (about 80% live below the poverty line), and lowest health outcomes indicators in Baringo. In  2020, 46% of children in Baringo had been immunized against measles, compared to 89% of the general Kenyan population. 88.7% of children in Baringo had received the Oral Polio 3 vaccine compared to 87% of the general population. 92.9% of children in Baringo County had been immunized against TB with the BCG vaccine compared to 95% of the general population. With a density of 29 inhabitants per square kilometer, Baringo County is sparsely populated, remote, and its people highly marginalized.