Employers in private companies have stepped up programmes to fight Aids in work places, boosting the national effort to create awareness on the pandemic.

About 60 per cent of companies under the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) have set up campaign schemes in the last seven months following the launch of a work place code of conduct, said executive director Jacqueline Mugo.

The code spells out how companies can create, implement and monitor Aids policies that can be used to distribute information to employees with a special focus on reducing stigma and discrimination.

Most organisations have started peer counselling sessions and given free space to Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) Centres, while others have drafted new strategies of dealing with the disease, said Mrs Mugo, adding: "What we need now is a structured engagement with the public sector on the need to offer counselling and create awareness on the pandemic."

Special programmes minister Naomi Shaban said the private and public sector have the potential to come up with a unified response to the scourge.

The aim of a work place Aids prevention programme is to help keep employees from infection while showing them how to live with those already afflicted.

The Nation Media Group held a one-week testing session in the workplace for employees and family members as part of activities to mark the World Aids Day last week.

Ms Pauline Kiraithe, the Nation Human Resource Manager, said more than 150 employees were tested in the VCT on the first day.

Barclays Bank also holds annual awareness campaigns on the pandemic, according to Ms Nuru Mugambi the Corporate Affairs Manager.

This year's theme of Universal Access and Human Rights emphasises on prevention, treatment, access, care and support of people with Aids in line with the push to have companies create preventive measures in the workplace.

According to statistics by the National Aids Control Council, 30 per cent of Kenyans have known their status through the free VCT centres set up by the government, while over 60 per cent of those in need of anti-retroviral drugs have access to them, helping the country to avoid 86,000 Aids-related deaths.

Improved monitoring and research has helped reduce the new infections among 15-year-olds and above by 16 per cent in 2008.

However, new challenges on prevention threaten to hurt the war on the pandemic especially because of homosexuality.

Dr Jotham Micheni, the CEO of Kenyatta National Hospital, which attends to an average of 200 Aids patients everyday, says by promoting individual human rights in organisations, new infections can be prevented and people with Aids could live without being discriminated against.