NAIROBI (dpa) – The first information about AIDS was available in Kenya in the middle of the 1980s, yet nothing was done about it.
By the mid-1990s 55 per cent of prostitutes tested in the port of Mombasa were HIV positive. Still nothing happened.Sexual education in schools was taboo and AIDS was presented as a conspiracy by the old colonial powers against Africa.It was only in 1999 after strong international pressure that President Daniel arap Moi’s government officially recognized the terrible developments and declared AIDS a national catastrophe.Today almost 14 per cent of the population is infected with the deadly virus. More than 2.1 million people, including 78,000 children, are threatened with the most wretched of deaths in the east African country.The money and infrastructure needed for the sort of treatment provided in the United States and Europe to HIV or AIDS sufferers simply does not exist.In 1999 alone, 180,000 people died in Kenya as the result of AIDS. Despite recent government declarations and the activities of international aid organizations AIDS remains a taboo subject.The newspapers are full of announcements of the deaths of young people. That most have died of AIDS can only be conjectured, for no relatives would admit openly to an AIDS death.Experts say there is some hope from the fact that Kenya is participating in advisory and information programmes which could provide the basis for a widespread strategy to combat the spread of the virus.Dr John Wecker, of the Germany pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim in Nairobi, said: “The fight against AIDS can only be step for step here.”The company intends to provide its medicine Viramune free of charge to developing countries for the next five years. In many cases it is claimed the medicine can prevent babies being infected by their HIV-positive mothers.Wecker said the Kenyan government had signalled its interest.“We can only be active where there is sufficient advice and information. We are following here World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines,” Wecker said.That the number of new infections in African countries has fallen slightly is not regarded as a reason to sound the all-clear.WHO believes the decrease can be explained by the fact that many sexually active people have contracted the virus over the past years.In addition some countries have made the fight against AIDS a top priority. Uganda is cited as a prime example with its campaigns for people to use condoms, which has led to the number of new infections declining since 1993.In neighbouring Kenya there has been no similar policy so far. The forecasts for the future are gloomy. UNAIDS, the United Nations anti- AIDS programme, has produced statistics forecasting that Kenya, already on the ropes economically, will see gross domestic product decline by 14 per cent by 2005.
