Kenya to join world in marking World Aids Day tomorrow

Kenya will join the world as it prepares to mark the 27^th World’s AIDS Day on Tuesday, 1^st December 2015 with the international theme of “Getting to Zero”.

The theme, which was started in 2011, is used to celebrate milestones that have been achieved in reducing the number of new HIV infections and Aids-related deaths and is aimed at achieving zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero HIV and Aids-related deaths.

Early this month, the country introduced HIV self-test kits to enable users determine their status at their convenience and in private.

National AIDS and STI Control Programme Director Martin Sirengo says the agency is lowering the HIV testing age from 18 to 15 because children are increasingly becoming sexually active.

According to data from the Kenya Aids Response Progress Report of 2014, 1.6 million Kenyans are living with HIV with only 596,228 on antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), making Kenya fourth in HIV prevalence after South Africa, Nigeria and India.

In October President Uhuru Kenyatta said that Kenya has scaled up its war against HIV/ AIDS by setting aside Ksh2.6 billion in its 2015/16 budget for the purchase of anti-retroviral drugs.

Speaking in New Delhi when he presided over a high-level meeting on ensuring access to lifesaving medicines to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, President Kenyatta affirmed his commitment to making Kenya the third country in Africa to control the HIV epidemic after Botswana and Namibia.

“Such global commitment with targets, investments and actions could well result in averting 28 million new infections and 21 million AIDS related deaths by 2030,” said Uhuru.

African development partners were also urged to bridge the financing gap in combating the HIV/AIDS in order to foster more equal partnerships.

Meanwhile, scientists seeking a cure for the AIDS virus have made an unexpected discovery with a drug designed to combat alcoholism which they say could be a critical part of a strategy to “wake up” and then kill dormant HIV hiding in the body.

The drug, branded as Antabuse but also sold as a generic called disulfiram, was given to 30 HIV positive patients in America and Australia who were already taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) AIDS drugs.

HIV latency, where the virus remains dormant in the body in people taking ART, is one of the biggest hurdles to achieving a cure for the viral infection that causes AIDS.

HIV/AIDS has killed some 34 million people since the 1980s, according to the United Nations HIV program UNAIDS.

By Jemimah Gathoni