Marking 28th World Aids Day: The Road So Far

Today, on the first day of the month of December 2016, Kenya is joining the rest of the world to mark the 28th World’s AIDS Day, with the international theme of “Hands up for HIV for HIV Prevention”.

The theme is after looking at ways that will help improve prevention strategies and identifying key areas among specific groups of people who are vulnerable to transmission especially adolescent girls and young women.

There have been great milestones that have been achieved in reducing the number of new HIV infections and Aids-related deaths across the world, and especially in Kenya. Despite the fact that there are still new infections, the country is doing its best to ensure that it has achieved zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero HIV and Aids-related deaths.w

In a statement released ahead of World Aids Day 2016, Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS, said the world has committed to end the ongoing epidemic by 2030 and countries are increasingly working to stop transmission between mother and baby.

In November, UNAIDS released a report showing 18.2 million people are now on antiretroviral therapy. However, it found women aged between 15 and 24 were at great risk. For this reason, they called for a “life-cycle” approach, so prevention targets every stage of a person’s life.

The report showed more and more countries were getting on the Fast-Track – an initiative launched in 2014 that sets out plans to bring the Aids epidemic to an end by 2030. The latest report found that in the six months to June 2016, an additional million people had gained access to anti-retroviral treatment.

“We are winning against the Aids epidemic, but we are not seeing progress everywhere,” Sidibé said. “The number of new HIV infections is not declining among adults, with young women particularly at risk of becoming infected with HIV.”

“We know that for girls in sub-Saharan Africa, the transition to adulthood is a particularly dangerous time. Young women are facing a triple threat: a high risk of HIV infection, low rates of HIV testing and poor adherence to HIV treatment.”

He said co-infections such as TB, cervical cancer and hepatitis C mean the target of having fewer than 500,000 Aids-related deaths by 2020 “out of reach”. Indeed, women living with HIV are up to five times more likely to develop cervical cancer, while TB caused around a third of Aids-related deaths last year.

The first case of HIV in Kenya was detected in 1984, and by the mid-1990s it was one of the major causes of mortality in the country putting huge demands on the healthcare system as well as the economy. HIV prevalence peaked at 10.5 percent in 1996, and had fallen to 6 percent by 2013 mainly due to the rapid scaling up of antiretroviral treatment (ART).

Kenya has an average HIV prevalence rate of 6 percent and with about 1.6 million people living with HIV infection, it is one of the six HIV ‘high burden’ countries in Africa. The western part of the country through Homabay, Siaya and Kisumu are the most affected with HIV with rates of 25.7 percent, 23.7 percent and 19.3 percent respectively. The counties with the least infection rates are Wajir, Tana River and Marsabit with rates of 0.2 percent, 1 percent and 1.2 percent.

According to the UNAIDS Gap Report 2016, 1.5 million people were living with HIV in Kenya in the year 2015. The report further disclosed that there was 5.9 percent HIV prevalence among Kenyan adults. Women in Kenya, with a HIV prevalence rate of 7.6 percent are more vulnerable to HIV infection compared to men, with a HIV prevalence rate of 5.6 percent.

Even as the prevalence of the virus continues to decline among the general adult population, hyper-epidemics persist in parts of the country and among certain groups such as sex workers, men who have sex with men and people who inject drugs. Near