Survey: Feeling healthy keeps most Kenyans from preventive health checks

A person can feel perfectly fine and still be sick. This paradox sits at the heart of a new survey that exposes a stubborn gap in how Kenyans approach their health. Researchers asked 1,100 working adults across the country why they were not getting regular health checks. The answer came back overwhelming and consistent: 72 percent said they simply felt healthy, so they saw no reason to go.

That figure dwarfs every other barrier. Lack of time accounted for 18 percent of responses. Cost held back 10 percent. Inconvenient scheduling stopped 12 percent. But the absence of symptoms—the feeling that nothing is wrong—kept nearly three-quarters of people away from basic screening. The survey, commissioned by Doctors for Healthy Living and conducted by Ipsos Kenya, reveals a healthcare system working against itself: people know what they should check, but they do not feel compelled to check it.

The awareness is there. Nine in ten respondents knew about blood pressure. Nearly four in five had actually had their blood pressure measured at some point. Seventy-eight percent were aware of blood sugar, though only 47 percent had ever tested it. Cholesterol awareness stood at 63 percent, yet just 15 percent had been screened. The gap between knowing and doing widens further when you look at recent behavior. In the three months before the survey, only 28 percent had tested blood sugar. Seven percent had checked cholesterol. Five percent had measured waist circumference. The numbers suggest that knowledge alone does not move people to act.

This matters because the conditions being screened for—hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease—often develop silently. A person can have dangerously high blood pressure or blood sugar and feel nothing at all. The absence of dizziness, pain, or fatigue is not evidence of health; it is simply the absence of symptoms. Dr. Robert Mathenge, co-founder of Doctors for Healthy Living, frames the problem plainly: many people conflate feeling healthy with being healthy. That conflation can be costly. Undetected or poorly managed non-communicable diseases accumulate complications over time, and by the time symptoms appear, damage may already be done.

The survey found that 90 percent of respondents claimed to understand what these health indicators meant for their wellbeing—45 percent said they understood "very well," another 45 percent "fairly well." Yet that understanding did not consistently translate into action. The researchers point to a deeper issue: preventive healthcare is still treated as an occasional decision rather than a routine behavior. People do not see a doctor because they do not feel sick, and without that feeling, the urgency simply does not materialize.

One detail emerged with particular clarity: women reported higher awareness and stronger testing behavior than men across most indicators. Yet feeling healthy remained the leading reason for not testing among both genders. This suggests the problem is not primarily about gender or access, but about how health checks themselves are perceived—as something you do when something is wrong, not something you do to make sure nothing is wrong.

The researchers see opportunity in shifting that perception. Anthony Mugo, head of partnerships at Doctors for Healthy Living, argues that knowing your numbers should become as routine as servicing a car or renewing insurance. Workplaces emerged as a potential lever; most survey participants were economically active, and employers could normalize screening by making it convenient and accessible. Pharmacies, despite being places people visit frequently, were not commonly identified as preferred screening locations—a gap worth closing. Public health facilities and private clinics were preferred, but the real shift would come from embedding health checks into the rhythms of daily life rather than treating them as special occasions.

The survey sample was specific: 1,100 connected working adults, mostly between 25 and 44, concentrated in Nairobi and urban areas. The findings describe this population, not all Kenyans. Yet the central question they raise is harder to dismiss: if feeling healthy is the reason most people skip screening, what could be discovered simply by looking before something feels wrong? The answer, Mathenge suggests, is straightforward. Knowing and monitoring key health indicators is one of the simplest and most effective ways of taking charge of your health. Sometimes the absence of symptoms is reassuring. But reassurance is not the same as proof.