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Today In History |
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On September 9, 1911
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1st European airpost (Hendon to Windsor, England)
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KENYA: HIV/AIDS a major health issue in western region |
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 NAIROBI, Nov 2005 (IRIN/PLUSNEWS)
- HIV/AIDS remains a major health concern in Kenya despite the fact
that a recent study showed a drop in the national prevalence rate.
According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS),
the overall adult infection rate reduced from 10 percent in the late
1990s to 7 percent in 2003.
Despite the reduction, which was
mainly due to awareness-creation programmes, UNAIDS estimated that some
1.2 million Kenyans were living with the virus, of whom 100,000 are
children. Some 650,000 children have been orphaned as a result of the
disease.
To contain the epidemic, Kenya has set up national institutions and
local committees in communities and is working on a new strategic
five-year plan for its fight against HIV/AIDS.
"HIV/AIDS
continues to pose a great threat to our society. [...] The virus is
destroying the gains made over the years attesting to the fact that the
disease has impacted negatively on our country's economy," said Patrick
Orege, director of the National AIDS Control Council (NACC), in a
statement.
According to the NACC 2000-2005 work plan, the
disease increasingly affects the poor and people with low levels of
formal education.
"The profile of HIV-infected people has been changing and is becoming a
disease of the poor with educated people in a position to respond to
information available - and adopting safer sexual practices, meaning
that the share of new infections is rising among low income and less
educated people" NACC noted.
"Substantial reduction in poverty levels is key to subsequent lowering of HIV prevalence rates" the agency maintained.
Gender
is also a factor in HIV/AIDS infection. HIV/AIDS prevalence among women
aged 15-49 in Kenya is nearly 9 percent, compared to less than 5
percent for men in the 15-54 age group, according to a 2003 demographic
and health survey."
"This female-to-male ratio of 1.9:1 is
higher than found in most population-based studies in Africa and
implies that young women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection
compared with young men", the report noted.
The national
HIV/AIDS strategic plan acknowledged that women are more vulnerable to
HIV infection than men – largely as a result of women's lower position
in the hierarchy of traditional societies, powerlessness and lack of
adequate information about the disease.
The "majority of women
have little control over their own sexual behaviour, and less over the
sexual behaviour of their husbands or partners", the NACC observed.
"In addition women have biological factors that increase their risk of
HIV infection. As a strategy to fight HIV/AIDS women should be
empowered to enforce faithfulness within relationships," it noted.
The
government estimated that by 2003 the level of public HIV/AIDS
awareness had risen to more than 90 percent across the country. It
noted, however, that information, education and communication campaigns
(IEC) were being undermined by custom and a lack of trained personnel
at the community level.
As a result of increased awareness,
condom use has risen. "There has been a change in sexual behaviour
among Kenyans" observed Rachael Arungah, permanent secretary for
special programmes, in a statement. "Use of condoms [has risen] from 15
percent in 1998 to 24 percent among the women in 2004 and from 42.5
percent in 1998 to 47 percent in 2003 among men."
Similarly, the
proportion of men and women with more than one sexual partner reduced
by more than half between 1993 and 2003. Over the same period, more
adolescents delayed the onset of sexual activity.
According to
the government, awareness raising, scaling up VCT centres and other
strategies are part of efforts to realise the March 2003 declaration of
"Total War Against HIV/AIDS".
According to Miriam Were, NACC
chairwoman, the government anticipates "further reduction in new HIV
infections through stepped up behaviour change communication,
especially targeting young women and other groups with greater
vulnerability to the virus."
NACC noted in its 2000-2005
HIV/AIDS strategic plan, however, "Successful IEC interventions for
behaviour change are complicated by the fact that matters of human
sexuality are closely tied to traditional beliefs and cultural
practices.
In no other place in Kenya, perhaps, is this demonstrated as strongly as in Nyanza province in western region.
Badly Hit
While the national picture indicates some progress in the fight against
the disease, the situation in Nyanza province is completely different.
The
province - with an average HIV/AIDS infection rate of 14.7 percent -
continues to face a crisis and offers a lesson in the role culture and
tradition play in the transmission of the HIV virus.
Traditions
such as wife inheritance and widow cleansing, a fish trade in which
women often fall prey to sexual exploitation, a tribal culture that
views sexual intercourse as a harbinger of good fortune, and the lack
of male circumcision have been cited as factors that contribute to high
HIV/AIDS infection rates.
In this special report, IRIN explores
the HIV/AIDS crisis in Nyanza province’s Bondo, Homa Bay, Kisumu,
Migori and Suba districts.
In villages surrounding Kenya's
Lake Victoria, the pandemic continues to wreak havoc, awareness levels
remain relatively low, traditions that facilitate the transmission of
HIV persist, and medical facilities are too far away for many of those
desperate for help.
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