Higher AIDS rates in rural Kenya

HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in rural Kenya are now higher than in the country's urban areas, the local Daily Nation newspaper reported on Wednesday. The Kenyan National AIDS Control Council director, Kenneth Chebet, has attributed the shift to a concentration of activities by most HIV/AIDS organisations in towns instead of rural areas. "Initially high numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS were found in Kenya's towns, but some 62 percent of the country's HIV/AIDS cases are now in rural areas," Chebet added. With an estimated 2.2 million people in Kenya living with HIV/AIDS, life expectancy has declined from 59 years to 49 years in the last decade.