Efforts to curb the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Kenya received a boost this week when the United States (US) committed to US$370 million for the support of treatment, care and prevention programmes.
"Kenya will benefit from more than 10 times the US funding that was available four years ago," the US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, said at the release of an overview of the third annual report to Congress on the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday.
In the 2005 fiscal year - from 1 October 2004 to 30 September 2005 - more than $142 million was disbursed in Kenya by PEPFAR, according to the National AIDS and STI (sexually transmitted infection) Control Programme (NASCOP). Kenya has a national HIV prevalence of 5.9 percent.
According to Ranneberger, the increase in funding was prompted by the success of PEPFAR's programmes in Kenya: almost 380,000 pregnant women were tested for HIV over a six-month period from 30 March to the end of September 2005. Of these, nearly 24,000 also received drugs to keep their children free of infection.
"We have also seen a sevenfold increase in the number of pregnant women who did not just get single-dose treatment, but ended up getting started on lifelong treatment," said Warren Buckingham, PEPFAR's country coordinator.
During the same period, Ranneberger said, PEPFAR also supported over 42,000 thousand condom outlets, including pharmacies, and reached over one million sexually active Kenyans, contrary to the perception that the organisation only supported abstinence and faithfulness in HIV prevention.
National treatment coverage improved from 1.5 percent in 2003 to 35.8 in 2006 but, like most of PEPFAR's 15 focus countries, Kenya has seen a drop in life expectancy as a result of HIV/AIDS, which has also been counteracting improvements in other health indicators, the overview of the report said.
Ranneberger said the increased funding for HIV programmes in Kenya was also due to careful monitoring of the funds to ensure accountability and transparency.
The funding for 2007 also includes $5 million to expand access to information on male circumcision, after research findings indicated that men who had undergone the procedure dramatically lowered their risk of contracting the HI virus.
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