Feeling 'healthy' may be keeping Kenyans from health checks, study finds
A new survey in Kenya, commissioned by Doctors for Healthy Living (D4HL) and conducted by Ipsos Kenya, reveals that 72% of working adults who haven't had recent health checks cite 'feeling healthy' as the main reason. This indicates a significant gap between awareness of health indicators and actual engagement in preventive healthcare.
Why it matters
This study highlights a critical public health challenge in Kenya, where a false sense of security prevents individuals from undergoing essential preventive screenings, potentially leading to delayed diagnoses of non-communicable diseases and increased healthcare burdens.
For most people, feeling well is reassurance enough. No pain, no dizziness, no unusual fatigue, no reason to see a doctor. Life continues, work gets done and the thought of checking blood pressure, blood sugar or cholesterol can easily be pushed to another day.
However, a new survey suggests that this very feeling of being healthy could be keeping many people from checking whether they actually are.
The Know Your Numbers survey, commissioned by Doctors for Healthy Living (D4HL) and conducted by Ipsos Kenya, found that among 1,100 connected working adults surveyed, feeling healthy was by far the biggest reason given for not undergoing recent health checks.
Seventy-two per cent of respondents who had not recently tested said they did not do so because they felt healthy.
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