Last week (13 august,
2016) 250 adolescence and young people underwent HIV testing and life skills
training in the informal settlements in Kisumu city as part of the effort to Reduce new HIV infection and mortality in adults and
children by 80%
Good Samaritan program
of the Bible Society of Kenya With Support of the United Bible Society in
collaboration with Ministry of Health, Elizabeth Glazier Pediatric AIDS
Foundation EJAF Project, LVCT Health, Victory Post Test Group, Nelson Mandela CBO,
the local communities and football teams from the informal settlements. Other
organization present were Kenya football referees association, football Kenya
federation, coaches association, Kenya primary sports association and football stakeholders.
The event dubbed SHOOT
OUT HIV attracted fifteen teams composed of 15 to 19 years of age of which 8
were girls and 7 were boys. A large number of spectators turned out for the
tournament over 1000.As the matches were playing life skills training, HIV Testing
Services(HTS) which included condom demonstration and distribution took place
of which 2500 condoms were distributed. Of the 249 tested 154 were male and 95 were female 4 were
positive of which 3 were female and 1 was a male who were referred to patient
support Centre’s. This underscores that women are more vulnerable underscoring that
three out of every four adolescents in Africa who
contract HIV are girls, so are especially at risk if we don’t act fast
According Kenya HIV
estimates report 2014 Kisumu has a total population of approximately 1059053
with a 134,826 living with HIV, The County is also among the nine counties that
contribute up to 65 percent (66014 of the new HIV infections in nine counties
out of the national total 101,560) Kisumu comes third in new infections with 12,645
(10,682 are adult and 2,209
are children.) contributing 12.5% nationally. Almost half of the
young people who are eligible for antiretroviral therapy (ART) are not
accessing or are not on it .The ART coverage is also poor
Currently the global ‘ALL IN
CAMPAIGN’ efforts towards ending adolescents AIDS we need skilled and confident ‘adolescence champions
as change agents who can engage in
advocating and meaningfully involved as well as to contribute to policy
and programing at county, national and global levels.
We are asking the government to allocate resources to empower adolescence
ambassadors to engage fellow adolescence in schools to fight stigma, promote HTS
and psychosocial support services in schools as this is the only place where
adolescence can be found apart from school holidays
The event was graced by
Linah Orenjo program officer and secretary general Bible society of
kenya,Joseph Chomba assistant program officer, Dalmas Oleko zonal Manager, Kasim Peter Football
Kenya Federation Kisumu sub branch and
Kennedy Rading for Member of County
Assembly Migosi Ward ,Kisumu County Kenya
No comments:
Post a Comment