Why the new global campaign against HIV/Aids targets Kenya’s adolescents

On February 17 in Nairobi, President Kenyatta, a passionate advocate of the advancement of youth and empowerment of young people, presided over the launch of the Global All In! Campaign, a partnership aimed at consolidating efforts against HIV/Aids among adolescents.

The President remarked: “At a time when our nations are looking forward to unprecedented growth and change, we have the blessing of young and able people to drive development. But the HIV and Aids burden on this group threatens to rob us of this promise.”

This worldwide campaign brought together several UN agencies, civil society organisations and donors, to reduce new HIV infections among adolescents by at least 75 per cent and increase HIV treatment to reach at least 80 per cent of adolescents living with the virus.

This important initiative is crucial for Kenya. For many girls and women in the country, gender discrimination is all too common. One in four girls and women in Kenya between the ages of 15 and 49 underwent female genital mutilation.

Taken together, the alarming statistics of child marriages and gender-based violence, early pregnancies and high maternal deaths, as well as HIV infections, reveal a particularly vulnerable subpopulation — the adolescent girls of Kenya.

SERIOUS THREAT

According to a 2011 report by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the HIV/Aids epidemic poses a serious threat to the health of Kenyan youth.

Young women between the ages of 15 and 24 are four times as likely to be infected with HIV as young men in the same age category — a gender ratio that has not improved over the past 10 years.

Successive demographic health surveys suggest that rates of teen pregnancies and motherhood, a major health risk to teenage girls, have changed little since 1993.

Although some efforts have been taken to stem the rising tide of HIV infections among young people, success is limited, and adolescent girls are at a clear disadvantage. The National Aids Control Council found that between 2009 and 2013, the number of people living with HIV increased from 1.6 million to 1.9 million, with adolescent girls disproportionately infected.

Early marriages and pregnancies have a substantial role in this disparity, and it is no surprise that Kenyan women face such a high maternal mortality ratio — 488 per 100,000 live births. For example, more than one out of four young women is married by age 18, increasing their likelihood of having children at an early age.

Nearly one out of three young married women has an unmet need for family planning, meaning they wish to delay childbearing, but are not using any method of contraception, and are at risk for having an unintended pregnancy. 

PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

Teenage girls infected with HIV are confronted with prejudice and discrimination in seeking medical services. People living with HIV are stigmatised, with less than half of men and women expressing an accepting attitude towards them — one obstacle to the nation’s response to HIV.

It is imperative that we at the UN and the government and civil society organisations help empower the adolescent girl to make good decisions for her own physical and sexual health.

UNFPA’s Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin in his video address at the launch of the Global All In! campaign said: “Every girl, no matter who or where she is, has the right to bodily integrity, to sexual and reproductive health, and to take decisions about her sexuality and reproduction free from coercion, discrimination and violence. She has the right to be engaged in decisions that affect her life.”

Unicef, WHO, UNaids and UNFPA are “All In” and will work with all partners to protect the human rights, sexual and reproductive health rights, and to support all adolescents in preventing and treating HIV and Aids.

After all, healthy adolescents make healthy adults. Preventing HIV infections is one way to reducing the high maternal mortality and infant deaths.

With political commitment, the First Lady’s Beyond Zero campaign and the signing of a communiqué by 15 governors with the highest burden of maternal deaths to advance adolescent health, Kenya, indeed, can lead the way.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Population Fund representative to Kenya. (Twitter: @sidchat1)