More than half of Kenyans living with metabolic disease do not know they have it. The national caseload will double by 2050. Clinicians meeting in Nairobi on Saturday named this gap the central challenge in Kenya’s response to the disease.
The meeting, Convergence: The Metabolic Continuum, Refined by Design, brought together the Kenya Association of Physicians (KAP), the Hospital Pharmacists Association of Kenya (HOPAK), and Getz Pharma. At the forum, Getz Pharma introduced Zepad, its tirzepatide product, into the Kenyan market. The drug requires a prescription and treats obesity, type 2 diabetes, and the conditions that ride alongside them.
Patients Arrive Too Late
About 200 healthcare professionals attended, drawn from referral centres, private hospitals, and private practices across the country. They described a pattern: most patients enter the health system only after damage has already reached the heart, kidneys, liver, or eyes. Treatment at that stage costs more and works less well.
Muhammad Ashad, Getz Pharma’s Country Manager for Kenya, said the company wants to close that gap by training the physicians who make the diagnosis, not just the patients who receive it.
“There is a significant access gap to diagnosis and treatment,” Ashad said. “Our role is to put the current science in front of the diagnosing physicians and keep supporting them as they look at metabolic disease as multifaceted and intertwined. If earlier intervention is what changes outcomes, then knowledge is the first intervention.”
What the Numbers Show
The International Diabetes Federation counted just over 813,000 Kenyans living with diabetes in 2024. Of those cases, 53.6 percent remain undiagnosed, and the federation projects the total will climb past 1.8 million by 2050. Nearly one in three Kenyan adults carries excess weight or lives with obesity. National surveys record raised blood pressure in 25.1 percent of men and 22.6 percent of women.
Kenya is not alone in this. Across the region, health reporters at Khusoko have tracked a similar pattern: diseases once treated as isolated problems are converging into a single, connected burden on East African health systems.
Doctors Push for One Diagnosis, Not Four
Dr Erick Njenga, President of the Kenya Association of Physicians, argued that medicine keeps separating conditions that patients experience as one continuous decline.
“Although obesity is recognised internationally as a chronic relapsing disease driven by biological, hormonal, genetic, and metabolic factors, it continues to be treated in public discussion as lifestyle failure,” Njenga said.
“We continue to treat obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and kidney disease as separate referrals when in our patients they are stages of one metabolic process. A patient should not have to develop heart failure before the system takes their weight seriously.”
Prof Abbas Raza, immediate past President of the International Society of Endocrinology, delivered the keynote and framed the moment as a narrow window.
“Kenya, and the whole world, is at a point where earlier intervention can still change the trajectory of chronic disease for a generation of patients,” Raza said. “The health system needs to adapt and grow with the increasing evidence of holistic management resulting in better outcomes for patients over the long term.”
How the New Drug Works
Tirzepatide targets two hormone pathways at once, GIP and GLP-1, giving it a dual role in controlling blood sugar and managing weight. Its arrival in Kenya gives physicians another tool against a disease that, for most patients, is still catching them off guard.
About Getz Pharma
Getz Pharma is a member of Getz Group USA and manufactures branded generics. The company operates in more than 45 countries and employs over 8,000 people worldwide. Its manufacturing facilities carry approval to WHO, PIC/S, and EAEU good manufacturing practice standards.
Getz Pharma has supplied medication in Kenya for two decades and ranks among the ten largest pharmaceutical companies in the market. The company also funds continuing medical education and scientific programmes for healthcare professionals in the country. Its portfolio covers cardiovascular and metabolic disease, among other therapeutic areas.
The forum’s message came down to timing. Kenya already has the tools to catch metabolic disease early. What it needs now is a health system built to look for it before the damage sets in, not after.
