By Josephine Achieng
While Kenya has made significant strides in reducing HIV/AIDS infections rates and deaths, the governments needs to increase efforts and investments in prevention and treatment among key populations to achieve even better results.
One key area that requires urgent attention is the level of investments in the HIV Cure agenda. As it is currently, there has been significant focus on development of HIV Vaccine. Yet, researchers involved in efforts towards development of a vaccine continue to state the fact that the world is still far off from a vaccine and advising that more efforts need to be directed towards supporting treatment based HIV Cure.
The key challenge in rolling out this approach though is investments towards targeting, and involvement of key populations such as sex workers, persons with disabilities, men having sex with men, people injecting drugs and trans-genders in cure research. These populations remain largely unaware of new developments in the prevention and treatment approaches and continue to hold back the country’s progress towards zero HIV deaths.
For example, although the sex workers continue to face huge vulnerabilities to HIV infections, their access to prevention and treatment information remains low. The same position applies to men having sex with men and people injecting drugs.
Take for instance key populations with disabilities, the problem is even severe as information on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment is not available in accessible formats such as Braille and Sign Language. Furthermore, Key Populations with disabilities and living with HIV/AIDS face double discrimination and stigma from the community and health care workers which discourage other persons with disabilities from seeking preventive and treatment services.
In the light of these challenges, the government needs to review its strategy on HIV/AIDS on these populations to improve policy outcomes among them.
It is clear from a casual practice assessment that there is no coherent policy on these populations.
A new policy approach would lead to increased investment in cure research for these populations. It would also ensure that these populations have increased awareness on new developments in testing and HIV Cure approaches.
Above all, it would see increased involvement of Key populations in policy development and implementation as well as iŕn HIV Cure research and communication.
Ultimately, accelerating progress towards zero HIV/AIDS death largely depends on how fast the government policy on HIV Cure effectively moves these populations from the periphery to the centre.
Failure to act quickly will only lead to stagnation in progress as infection rates among these Key populations will also remain stagnant.
The writer is an AVAC HIV CURE fellow