As Nairobi Hospice and Oxford Brookes University celebrate 25 years of collaboration, their palliative-care programme stands as one of the region’s most important training platforms for the growth of hospice and palliative care in Kenya and Eastern Africa. The next cohort begins on September 28, 2026.
There are qualifications that decorate a wall. Then there are qualifications that change the way a professional walks into a ward, sits beside a family, manages pain, speaks to a frightened patient, supports a caregiver and leads a team through some of life’s most difficult moments.
For 25 years, the collaboration between Nairobi Hospice and Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom, has offered the latter.
Through the Diploma of Higher Education in Palliative Care, locally known as the Higher Diploma in Palliative Care, Nairobi Hospice has helped shape a generation of health and social-care professionals who understand that healthcare is not only about fighting disease. It is also about relieving suffering, restoring dignity, supporting families, managing pain, holding honest conversations and helping people live meaningfully, even when cure is no longer possible.
This is not simply a course. It is a workforce-development intervention, a leadership pipeline and a regional capacity-building platform. It is one of the ways East Africa continues to say: care does not end when cure is uncertain.
