Michael Mugwang'a
28 November 2006
Nairobi — A shortage of healthcare experts in Kenya is among factors frustrating the country's fight against HIV/Aids.
Lack of sufficient funds is also a major challenge.
A new report on the global fight against the disease says limited access to anti-retroviral drugs for children and an increasing need for expensive second-line drugs have been stumbling blocks to war on Aids.
The report is compiled by Aids treatment activists from 125 countries. It evaluates the work of international agencies working to achieve universal access to Aids treatment, and examines the progress in five other countries hard hit by Aids - the Dominican Republic, India, Nigeria, Russia and South Africa.
While great strides had been made in Kenya and globally toward increasing access to Aids treatment, much more remains to be done, notes the report.
It was also noted that far too few people in Kenya are receiving treatment for Aids. Only 90,000 are on anti-retroviral drugs, while 263,000 adults and 39,000 children are in need of the treatment.
However, in the past six months, says the report, encouraging progress on treatment had been witnessed, with almost 20,000 additional people put on the drugs.
However, the inefficiencies and delays in releasing funds by the Government remain major barriers to rolling out treatment, the report further explains.
The report finds Kenya's official goal of having 190,000 people, which is assumed to constitute "universal treatment" on the drugs by 2010 achievable but this falls short of those who need treatment.
The report recommends that the goal should be raised.
There is also need for countries to roll out the treatment to rural areas, so as to make sure as many people are possible receive it.
"In Kenya and every other country, we need to be reaching people in both rural and urban areas, the marginalised as well as the privileged, and children as well as adults," said Mr James Kamau, of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement (Ketam), one of the organisations that worked on the report.
The report recommends a number of actions to be taken to tame the spread of the Aids-causing virus in the country.
They include expanding paediatric treatment with increased training for medical workers and development of national guidelines on paediatric treatment; provision of tuberculosis screening for all those testing positive for HIV, or receiving HIV care; and improving linkages between HIV and TB programmes.
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