The Kenya team

Lucy Nyaga
Country Director – LSTM Kenya

Lucy Nyaga is a public health and development specialist with seventeen years professional experience in the field of health and development. She holds a master’s degree in Medical Anthropology and is completing a PhD in Public health. She has extensive experience in programmes development, implementation and management in the East and Southern African region with work in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH). Lucy's experience spans across major development agencies including the UN, EU, GIZ, USAID, DfID and reputable international, regional and national NGOs. Her key interests include providing support to development stakeholders in the public health sphere to design, develop, implement, monitor and evaluate public and private sectors engagement strategies aimed at improving health outcomes. 

Lucy is the LSTM Kenya Country Director. She provides overall leadership of the LSTM office and programmes in Kenya.  

Pamela Godia (PhD)
Senior Technical Officer – Quality of Care

Pamela is a Public Health specialist with over 15 years’ experience in leading, planning and managing the public health aspect of reproductive health programs at the national level in Kenya. Areas of focus include Primary Health Care, Social Science and Health - the Intersection and Health Systems Strengthening. She has vast experience in public health policy, research and provision of technical assistance. She provides technical expertise to the Kenya Ministry of Health in national level coordination of maternal and perinatal death review and setting up a system of confidential enquiry into maternal deaths. She coordinates MPDSR across Kenya, supporting the national MPDSR Committee, county, facilities and community committees to improve data collection, analysis, reporting and dissemination on maternal and perinatal/neonatal deaths. She was key in coordinating the training of maternal deaths assessors, the production and dissemination of the First and second Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Death (CEMD) and first Annual National MPDSR Report reports for Kenya. Pamela is a Principal Investigator of a study documenting COVID-19 response preparedness in Kenya and related experiences of health care providers and covid-19 survivors.  

Rael Mutai
Regional Technical Advisor

Rael holds a master’s degree in Public Health and a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Rael has over 20 years of professional experience in health and development from United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), The Royal Danish Embassy in Kenya, Ministry of Health Kenya and in several public and private hospitals in Kenya. 

Rael has extensive work history in health reform and health system strengthening with a focus on Primary Health Care and Sexual Reproductive Maternal, New-born, Child, and Adolescent Health (SRMNCAH) including in emergencies. She has in-depth knowledge of and proven experience in Health across advocacy and policy dialogue, Capacity development, Knowledge management and in Service delivery.  Rael is highly conversant with health related global and regional frameworks and Country policies and their translation through Government and donor supported programmes.  

Rael holds the position of Regional Technical Advisor and works within the Global Fund, EMOC and QOC Unit. She is based at the LSTM Kenya office in Nairobi, with extensive travel to Tanzania and Zanzibar for technical delivery and business development activities. She has overall responsibility for the quality and provision of advice and technical support to multi-disciplinary teams and partner organisations. This will support the development and delivery of complex interventions that improve MNH outcomes.  

Dr Irene Nyaoke
Senior Technical Officer – Inservice Training

Irene is a qualified medical doctor with a post graduate training in Reproductive Health, and Public Health. As a clinician and public health expert with field experience in Reproductive Health, Health in Emergencies and Primary Health Care; Irene has worked in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Sudan on National, Regional and Global assignments.

Irene provides technical expertise in program management, delivery, and quality assurance of Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (EmONC) capacity building for Ministry of Health’s in-service frontline health care providers. This includes EmONC training, post training follow-up and EmONC mentorship, development of EmONC guidelines as well as documentation and dissemination of EmONC best practices and lessons learned for potential scale-up.

Duncan Shikuku
Senior Technical Officer – Pre-service

Duncan holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (Moi University) and a Masters in Midwifery and Women’s Health (Makerere University). He has 10 years’ experience in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health training, service delivery, research, health systems strengthening, technical support and project management in UKAID, USAID and GSK-funded projects.

Duncan is the technical and operational lead for pre-service training to the Kenya program. He leads the technical oversight, assistance and support to the program, Ministry of Health (MoH)/Division of Reproductive & Maternal Health, Nursing Council of Kenya (NCK), Clinical Officers Council (COC) and Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) and county governments to develop relevant policies, guidelines, pre-service training syllabi/curricula and learning resource packages, systems and financial commitments with a focus on strengthening in-service and pre-service (midwifery & medical) training. He maintains the Kenya project monitoring and evaluation database with technical skills in data analytics including quantum geographical information systems (QGIS) and contributes to development & design of study protocols & online surveys. He has designed and co-authored as a corresponding author for multiple researches and supports as an academic reviewer with the peer-reviewed scientific journals in areas of Maternal, Newborn and Child Health speciality.

Before joining LSTM, Duncan worked with Save the Children International in complex multi-partner reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health/family planning (RMNCAH/FP), nutrition, community health service (CHS) and water and sanitation hygiene (WASH) projects as a Maternal and Newborn Health Officer as well as Child Survival Service Delivery Officer. Under the projects, he contributed to the establishment and strengthening of multiple in-service and pre-service health training, mentorship and service delivery systems at the sub-national/counties level. He also worked with Global Health for Women's and Children's Health Research – Moi University as a Cluster Coordinator and Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) master trainer in western Kenya. At the pre-service level, he served as the external facilitator at AMREF Virtual Training School for midwifery and advanced diploma in clinical medicine (reproductive health specialty) programs.