Most new HIV infections are among youth, body says

There were 61,000 new HIV infections last year, with the majority being in youth aged 15 to 24 years, with the National Aids Control Council admitting challenges in curbing new infections despite the decline.

This is a 21 per cent decline from 77,647 cases in 2015.

Of the new cases, 13,700 were adolescents aged between 10 to 19 years, accounting for 22 per cent of all new infections.

Some 26,000 of the new infections were for those aged between 15 to 24, accounting for nearly half (43 per cent) of the new cases.

The chief executive officer of NACC, Dr Nduku Kilonzo, announced the results during the ongoing Aids conference in Nairobi raising and expressing her concerns about the behaviour change in the country.

She noted that only 44 per cent of the men who engaged in high-risk sexual behavior – not with a regular partner or with someone whose status is unknown – reported having used a condom.

This reinstates the widely held belief that knowledge does not translate into proper health seeking behaviour because more than half of women (57 per cent) and two-thirds of men (64 per cent) in Kenya have comprehensive knowledge about Aids.

With data to back her plea – the highest spending (60 per cent) on care and treatment and only 14 per cent on prevention – Dr Kilonzo urged the government and stakeholders to invest more in prevention.

'GREAT CONCERN'

“The decreasing investment in prevention is a great concern”, she said, urging individuals knowledgeable in Aids to teach one person a day.

Her presentation, “The status of the Kenya HIV response” pointed out that even though there was a massive reduction (66 per cent) in mother to child transmission of HIV – 12,940 in 2013 to 4,386 in 2016 – there were still 4,900 new cases in age 0 to 14.

Still 32,500 succumbed to Aids and children below 15 contributed the most to this body count, 4,000 which is 12 per cent of all Aids related deaths.

One in 10 of all deaths, 3,300, were of those aged 15 and 24.

As at now there are 1,555,700 HIV+ people in Kenya with the majority being women (903,600) taking up 58 per cent of the burden, as men (551,300) and children (100,800) account for 35 and 6 per cent respectively.

Kenya’s action towards HIV was applauded by the international partners at the conference such as Kate Harris from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Tamu Daniel from Pepfa, for meeting, or close to achieving, most of their targets for Aids.

For instance, the country was supposed to have put 1,095,700 people on ARVs by 2017, and managed to cover 1,018,900 (93 per cent).