Patients demand more funds for Aids drugs

People living with HIV/Aids and rights activists have protested against lack of funding and a government policy they say is intent on stripping the disease of its special status.

Hundreds demonstrated on Monday in Nairobi demanding an emergency conference to secure funding from the Global Fund.

Kenya, Lesotho, and South Africa have been told by the Fund that they are not eligible to apply for Round 11 financing because of a cash shortage.

This, said the demonstrators who included activists from Uganda, would affect the plans to reach more patients with life saving medicine.

“Ten years into treating HIV in poor countries and seeing a Global Fund that is downsizing is a bitter pill to swallow,” said Mr Nelson Otwoma the national Coordinator of Nephak, a network of people living with HIV.

“Kenya is concerned that some donor countries have reversed their commitment, forcing the Global Fund to call off Round 11 applications. If this trend continues, Kenya could experience setbacks in the war against HIV,” said Prof Alloys Orago, the head of the National Aids Control Council (NACC) in a statement on Wednesday.

However, he assured patients and other beneficiaries of the Fund not to panic yet as there was still enough to cover them until 2016.

“Though the available fund cushions beneficiaries from immediate effects of donor withdrawal up to 2016, such a move calls for home grown and innovative ways of locally financing the disease.”

According to NACC figures, available finances for Kenya from Global Fund for the next four years is about $540 million (Sh85 billion). In November last year, the Fund said it would not be financing new projects for the next two years because of declining contributions from donors.