GAY KENYANS EMBRACE INCLUSIVE AIDS PLAN

By Lesego Tlhwale (BTM intern)

KENYA – 28 January 2009: Gay rights groups are pleased with the third National Aids Stategic Plan by the National Aids Control Council (NACC), which caters for men who have sex with men (MSM) as most at risk populations, launched by Prime Minister Raila Odinga on 12 January 2010.

The Kenyan National Aids Strategic Plan (KNASP), among other things, aims to develop specific strategies to address HIV prevention to vulnerable groups such as couples with different HIV and Aids statuses, Commercial sex workers, orphans and vulnerable children, migrant workers, military and police, survivors of rape, drug injecting users and men who have sex with men.

Activists say this plan will grant the gay community greater access to prevention information and commodities from NACC and other government bodies, services that they struggled to benefit from before. 

“We are looking forward to calling on NACC to begin to implement the plan”, said David Kuria of Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya.

Speaking at the launch of the KNSP at the KICC Amphitheatre in Nairobi, Odinga reportedly said the country is “taking AIDS response to the next level.”

UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe said, “I believe the Plan is taking the right approach to those most at risk. It emphasises a strategy of combination prevention, and ensuring [that] access to services cuts across all four Pillars of the Plan.”

Sidibe added, “Although attempts to decriminalize sex work, homosexuality and drug use in Kenya meet with popular resistance, this Plan has evidence-based strategies to systematically remove constraints to reducing HIV transmission among groups in conflict with the law.”

Health and Sanitation Minister Beth Mugo on the other hand pointed out that a lot still needs to be done by government in order to effectively work with the most at risk populations, in particular, men who have sex with men.”

While commending the KNASP, Director of ISHTAR MSM Peter Njane, also called for urgent funding to support few MSM interventions available in Kenya presently.

“Let 2010 be the year where change begins and universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support moves from rhetoric to reality”, Sidibe concluded.

Reports show that Kenya has seen great success in its HIV response with Aids related deaths falling by one third since 2002 and prevalence declining in the past few years.