Lead image for Endocrine disorders: Early detection is key.
The most prevalent hormone disorders seen in children are diabetes, thyroid problems, and Vitamin D deficiency. The prevalence of diabetes appears to be rising globally, driven in large part by genetic factors. Other hormone disorders have remained broadly stable in their occurrence, but they are no less deserving of attention.
Type 1 diabetes affects approximately 6,500 children in Kenya. In 2024 alone, 1,380 new cases were recorded. The same year, 570 Kenyan children and young people under 20 years old died from the condition. Unfortunately, most of those deaths were preventable and primarily because the diagnosis wasn’t timely, or access to insulin was out of reach.
That number deserves a moment of deep reflection. These were not children who needed medicine that doesn’t exist. They lost their lives to a condition we know how to treat.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body destroys its own insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Without insulin, blood sugar climbs to dangerous levels. The warning signs are recognisable if you know what to look for. They include relentless thirst, frequent urination, unexplained weight loss, and persistent fatigue. These symptoms are often chalked up to a passing illness or the heat. By the time families seek medical help, some children have already reached diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening emergency.
Research from Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital and Aga Khan University Hospital, presented at the Joint Congress of the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology in 2025, found that even in Nairobi’s private hospitals, more than half of children with Type 1 diabetes arrived at their first diagnosis already in this critical state. The mean age at diagnosis was eight years old.
Part of what makes timely diagnosis so difficult is the persistence of misinformation. Many families still believe that childhood diabetes is caused by eating too much sugar or that it can be managed with diet or medicinal therapy alone. Some believe it is contagious, or even a curse. These myths delay the moment a family walks through a clinic door, and in some cases, they cost children their lives.
Diabetes is the most urgent concern, but not the only one. It is governed by insulin, one of the many hormones within the human endocrine system. The endocrine system is a network of glands and organs involved in making and regulating hormones that control important functions throughout the body, including growth, metabolism, development, and reproduction.
Growth hormone deficiencies can cause a child to fall significantly behind their peers with no obvious explanation. Thyroid disorders, both overactive and underactive, can disrupt concentration, mood, weight, and energy in ways that look, at first glance, like behavioural or learning difficulties. Puberty that arrives too early or too late carries real psychological weight for the adolescents living through it. All of these conditions respond well to treatment when caught early and compound quietly when they are not.