This International Nurses Day, we want to celebrate all the incredible nurses we work with across Kenya who bring compassion, dignity and comfort to people living with serious illness. Their work goes far beyond medicine, offering emotional support, advocacy and human connection to patients and families when it is needed most.
Stella Rithara is just one of those amazing nurses; a passionate palliative care nurse, educator and community advocate who has dedicated her life to ensuring people in Kajiado County can live and die with dignity.
After caring for her aunt through breast cancer, Stella discovered palliative care through Nairobi Hospice in 2005. What began as a personal experience became a lifelong calling. During home visits, she recognised that many patients in Kajiado West were missing out on vital care because they lived beyond the hospice catchment area. Refusing to let people suffer alone, she began volunteering on weekends, and her palliative care organisation ONPACC was born.
Since then, Stella has helped build a compassionate community care model that reaches underserved families with pain relief, emotional support and dignity at the end of life. Alongside this, she has trained future palliative care nurses through Kenya Medical Training College, helping establish the first higher diploma in palliative care nursing in a government institution in Kenya.
“I view palliative care as not just a profession, but as my identity and lifelong passion. It is not just what I do, but truly who I am” ~ Stella Rithara
Despite challenges including limited resources, low awareness and lack of access to essential medicines, Stella continues to serve her community with compassion and determination.
We are proud to work in partnership with Stella and ONPACC to bring palliative care closer to the people who need it most in Kajiado County.