Despite great strides, Aids war must go on

By RAILA ODINGA
Posted  Wednesday, November 30  2011 at  22:00

In Summary

• More than 60 per cent of new HIV infections are among the young people aged 15 to 35 years

There is no denying that the country has made great strides in fighting HIV-Aids since the first case was diagnosed in 1984. After peaking in the 1980s and 1990s, the decline in prevalence has been steady since.

We have made great strides in increasing the number of patients on care and antiretroviral therapy. In 2003, only five per cent of our people were receiving antiretroviral therapy. This rose to 42 per cent in 2007, with 172,000 patients on treatment.

By 2009, the number had increased to 336,980. Currently 460,000 patients are on antiretroviral treatment.

While our target remains getting to zero as captured in the theme of the 2011 World Aids Day, we can be proud of our achievements so far.

Still, the World Aids Day in 2011 comes with some disturbing data for our country. The rosy picture of falling infection rates hides some disturbing realities.

The latest data show that paediatric HIV infections resulting from mother to child transmission remains high. This is a result of the under-utilisation of prevention of mother to child transmission services. It has led to about 34,000 new infections annually among children.

Currently, two thirds of children who require antiretroviral Treatment are not accessing it. The reasons for this range from neglect by care-givers to lack of information.

Equally worrying is the running gender dimension of HIV-Aids in Kenya. The disease continues to have a hugely feminine face. Today, HIV-Aids prevalence among females aged 15-49 stands at 8 per cent, compared to 5 per cent for males in the same age bracket.

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This high gender disparity is also witnessed among our teenagers. HIV prevalence among girls aged 15-19 years is six times that of men in the same age group. It stands at 3 per cent for females compared to 0.5 per cent for males.

Overall, our young population remains exceedingly vulnerable, regardless of gender. Today, over 60 per cent of new HIV infections are among young people aged 15 to 35 years.

What these statistics show is that we still have a huge challenge protecting our female citizens and our youth from HIV.

This prevalence is worsened by the fact that the informal sector, which produces 25 per cent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product, and where the youth form the majority, is loosely coordinated when it comes to HIV prevention, care and treatment.

This sector does not have the workplace HIV programmes available to those in formal employment. The nature of the work in this sector means the entrepreneurs and workers are often hard to reach. They thus miss out on educational and health interventions on HIV-Aids.

Taken together, pediatric infections, high HIV-Aids prevalence among women, girls, youth and problems of providing care to those in the informal sector means we are far from being safe from the ravages of the disease.

By targeting women, youth and the informal sector, HIV-Aids continue to manifest a capacity to wreak havoc on our economy by crippling our most active population and sector.