Why focus on Kenya

It is certainly not the worst in the continent but the AIDS situation in Kenya is enough to cause concern primarily because the country is home to millions of AIDS orphans. The country is also credited with creating Kemron, one of the ‘wonder-drugs’ now riddled with controversy.

Over a number of years, the world has witnessed a lot of effort aimed at finding a vaccine, creating life prolonging drugs and fighting stigma,  and despite all the success in helping adults with the disease, when it came to children from poor economies such as Kenya,  it failed.

According to United Nations, HIV/AIDS is more aggressive in children less than 18 months old than in the adults and without treatment neatly 50% of them die before their second birthday.

In my quest to investigate how AIDS has affected children in Kenya, I arrived at a little shanty village of  Bamburi in Mombasa, here, the disease had affected more than 10 households with many of these families now headed by children whose parents had died or were dyeing of AIDS.

One such case was that of 13-year-old ….., whose parents died of AIDS and who has had to step into the ‘head of the family’ role in order to look after her younger siblings two of whom are infected with the disease.

She told me that AIDS had denied her a normal childhood and that she had become a constant ridicule among her peers. Outside her house,  a group of girls her age skip rope while she watches from her bedroom window.

“I can’t play with these kids, they think I will give them AIDS, I am now the girl with the strange disease.”