New People African Featur Service - Issue n. 89 - Agoust 1999

KENYA

AIDS FIGURES RISE

Kenya will be losing at least 100,000 people annually to AIDS by the year 2005. The massive loss of precious labour force is set to have serious effects on the country’s economy.

There are at least 1.5 million cases known to be HIV positive since the virus’ presence was first reported in 1980. The rate of infection has gone up, with predictions being fixed at 1.6m by the year 2000, and 2.1m by the year 2005. This means at least 100,000 will be dying from full blown AIDS by 2005, which translates to 12,500 per province, assuming an even distribution among the eight provinces.

Mr. Francis Muroki, an editor of the Family Magazine, during a recent meeting on AIDS gave the breakdown of figures as of December 1998. Nyanza province leads with 75,000 deaths and 500,000 positive cases since 1984. Following is Eastern province, with 45,000 deaths and 200,000 infected; Rift Valley 34,250 deaths and 300,000 infected; Western province 30,000 deaths and 150,000 infected; Central province 27,500 deaths and 150,000 infected; Coast province 25,000 deaths and 80,000 infected; Nairobi 12,500 deaths and 120,000 infected; and lastly North Eastern with 7,500 deaths and 10,000 infected.

At least one million children will have been orphaned by the scourge by the year 2005. Some sources claim that the one million mark has already been hit, with 20% of them being in Nyanza province.

Nyanza, which is a small province on the shores of Lake Victoria, has been most hard hit by the AIDS pandemic. According to Brother Anthony Koning, a coordinator with the Oyugis Integrated Programme, at least 70% of the people in Kasipul Kabondo division are HIV positive. He said that of the blood donations given in the hospitals in Kasipul Kabondo by relatives to assist patients, 90% turns out to be infected with the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus. Deaths due to full blown AIDS are so many that the carpenters advertise their trade by placing coffins outside their premises, while hospitals tell of the number of bodies they can store at a particular moment.

The Oyugis Integrated Programme is a recovery programme initiated by the Catholic Church to try and control the spread of the disease, and also take care of the orphans. They offer home care to about 650 orphans through provision of food, counselling and other basic needs. The programme has started a secondary school for the orphans, where they take in only the very bright students. Other students are offered technical training in various fields to enable them earn a living. Also targeted are girls who are forced by poverty to earn a living as commercial sex workers.

Orphans who had farms left for them are offered training in agriculture, and if need be, are given bulls and a plough to jump start them into earning a living. Orphans, and other children, who have tested HIV positive are used during awareness campaigns to give testimonies about how they got the disease, and how they’re coping with it.

Above is just one example of an organization that is trying to put a check on the spread of the deadly virus. There are many other organizations, mainly church related or NGOs, that are having small scale programmes to help in dealing with the problem of the spread of HIV and taking care of orphans. This is in a setting where the government has consistently been accused of doing just about nothing to check the spread of the disease.

As the Aids meeting was informed, the first case to test positive was in 1980. Yet, it was not until 1984 that the government owned up and admitted that the virus was officially present in the country. And now, a quarter a century later, the government is yet to do anything concrete aimed at curbing the spread of the disease. There have been no aggressive awareness campaigns in the media, nor has the government used the provincial administration to sensitize people, especially in the rural areas, about the disease.

The accusation of indifference is held against the government after noting that the only constant item in the Kenyan media where AIDS is mentioned or alluded to is during the commercials for Trust Condom. This indifference by the government has left the load of curbing the disease to NGOs, who, due to limitations in funding, have to concentrate in areas that are already hard hit. There are basically no effective prevention messages being aggressively presented to the people in areas not yet seriously affected.

In the capital city Nairobi, there are thousands of children orphaned by AIDS, while the actual figures of the dead and the infected are suspected to be much higher than the official ones. This assertion is brought up by observation of the number of the organizations working in the city’s expansive slums, and the number of people each caters for. What with the claim by one NGO that of the people going for voluntary tests at Kawangware / Riruta area in the city, four out of five test positive?

There has also been a tendency of the people who get really sick to leave the city and go to the rural home to die. In cases of the working class, causes of death and even the disease that one suffers from are kept secret if HIV related due to fear of loss of benefits. Bad as the trend may be, workers devised it to protect their families after most companies decided not to offer any benefits for any employee who dies of AIDS or is HIV positive. Some insurance companies cancel life insurance if the applicant is found to be positive.

This tendency to hide the cause of sickness / death results in the number of HIV / AIDS cases from the city appearing lower than is the case. Recently in parliament, a legislator proposed that it be made mandatory for AIDS related deaths to be released as such, but was countered by a colleague who said that the patients have a right to privacy. Kenyans still attach a great stigma to the disease, resulting in very few willing to confess as being infected.

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