“WITH American money gone, let’s see how long you’ll live,” is the comment a neighbour threw at ASN, a woman living with HIV who has had endless run-ins with relatives over land.
The mother of three lives in Kiambu and has been depending on social support and medicine supplied by organisations that depended on USAID funding. But with the recent freeze of the development agency’s operations and funds, ASN is staring at a bleak future.
Once the news of the stoppage of the USAID operation broke, a neighbour with whom she had been tussling over land sent her a message saying God had worked through the US government to solve the land issue.
“Some of my neighbours and relatives that are party to this land question believe it is the US money that has been feeding me. It is false. I work very hard. I only depended on their ARV supply to keep my life going. The network of counsellors and regular CD4 count tests was also the bloodstream of my life,” she told the Star.
ASN is among Kenyans who are facing a degeneration of health as clinics and health workers that were keeping the wheels of anti-HIV work spinning got discontinued.
Some 1.4 million Kenyans aged 15 and above were living with HIV as of 2021.
Though the infection rate has been rampant among teenagers and youth, data shows the number has been on a gradual decline over the years.
In 1996, 10.5 per cent of Kenyans were living with HIV but the number almost halved by 2015 as it declined to 5.9 per cent. In 2017, the adult HIV prevalence was estimated to be around 4.8 per cent.
Patricia Asero, the chairperson of the Kenyan chapter of the International Community of Women living with HIV, said the government must move with swiftness to restore crucial services to people, especially women and children living with HIV and any delay will lead to spike in complications and deaths.
It is not just HIV, she said, but TB treatment is also affected.
“TB samples are getting thrown out now as we speak because the community health workers and other support professionals are out of work. The situation is likely to get bad if the Kenyan government does not plug in the gap, now,” she said.
Asero says stigma associated with HIV is back and people living with the disease, especially men and those in same-sex relationships are shying away from receiving help
