The Bible urges us to profess and practically “Be Your Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper”. This well-meaning obiter dictum is well exemplified by a group of men and women living with HIV who closely engage with one another to improve their health and economic wellbeing.
Being bedridden for nine months and contemplating suicide, 40-year-old Janet (not her real name), a resident of the Kenyatta area in Molo sub-county, narrates how her family had lost hope and was anticipating the worst at any time, as her health condition was failing fast.
This saw her family ferry her to Molo Sub-County Hospital, where Janet was introduced to a Community ART Group (CAGs), a group of people from the same community living with HIV and are on ARVs. It seeks to empower the community to manage their own health and reduce stigma associated with HIV.
This emboldened her hope to live and she started taking Anti-Retroviral (ARVs) drugs and her condition greatly improved and she started having daily conversations on the phone with CAG members.
“At first, it was a very difficult period for me remembering the agonizing pain I went through. The news of my HIV status hit me hard; it took a very short time for my health to start deteriorating. But meeting CAG members raised me up from my deathbed; I religiously take my ARVs and attend my clinic days without fail. I have regained my strength and I am able to handle my domestic cores with ease. I have regained strength after the ARVs helped me to completely suppress my viral load (amount of HIV in body fluids) and my HIV status indicated Undetectable=Untransmittable (U=U),” she explained further.
At the clinic, Janet now has a close friend, Linet Pendo (not her real name), who discovered her HIV status in one of her routine check-ups when she was pregnant in 2009.
She was well advised by the medics at the facility but unfortunately, the medic who attended to her during her childbirth did not heed the precautionary measures involved to stop mother-to-child HIV infection.
“When I got into labour, I rushed to the hospital and informed the doctor of my HIV status knowing very well he was informed and would attend to me as per the directives given by the ministry of health to help reduce such infections,’’ said Pendo.
She continued to say that she had no doubt whatsoever that the medics would do their work and all she did was to ask the doctor whether she could breastfeed her baby or not.
“The doctor gave me a goahead to breastfeed my newborn child and later on I asked whether there was any medication that was to be administered to me but he insisted that all was well and I should indeed breastfeed the child,’’ explained Pendo.
For three months, Pendo gladly breastfed her son and on one day, the baby’s lips had wounds and she also fell ill more often and this prompted her to visit the hospital only to be informed that the baby turned positive for the virus.
“I was in disbelief and felt like the earth would open up and swallow me.” So many questions kept on lingering in my mind, remembering how I informed the medic of my HIV status during labour!” she exclaimed.
This state gained her admission to the hospital, and she was treated and allowed to recuperate from home after several weeks.
She faced stigma from family members upon disclosure of her status and together with her son, they have been taking their medications since then and have also achieved and maintained an undetectable viral load (U=U) for some years now.
This means that HIV-infected persons who achieve and maintain this status by regularly taking their ARVs cannot sexually transmit the virus to others.
This is one of the major qualifications for one to join a CAGs group, including being bold enough to disclose one’s HIV status to the group members and regularly taking the ARVs, among others.
For Janet and Pendo, both belonging to the Voice of Love CAGs group in Molo that has a membership of 15 members, has enabled them to overcome the trauma they went through since the day they got to know of their HIV status.
According to them, they feel economically empowered through the table banking activities they participate in the group; they boldly face their days being ambassadors in the fight against new infections and ending stigma.
“We meet once a month and during the meeting, each member is expected to contribute Sh200, where members will ask for a loan from the collection and pay it back with interest,” said Pendo.
This has enabled many to open up and share their experiences as they venture into starting small businesses and the members come in to assist when their own is faced with a challenge.
According to the group chairlady, the group has made tremendous progress that they can even access loans such as the women enterprise fund and are able to go on with their day-to-day activities without worry.
As a group, they receive their 6-month-long drugs twice a year, whereby each member has his or her turn to go get the drugs from the health facility and hand them in to the members during their meeting. Additionally, medics join the members to take blood samples from them when the time comes for checking up on their viral loads and therefore the members rarely visit the hospital for such services, thus easing the burden of having to attend to many HIV clients at the facility.
Nakuru County AIDS and STI Coordinator (CASCO) Rachael Kiuna noted that they are committed to scaling up health education within communities using the community members so that no one is left out in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
She says that by December, 2024, Nakuru County has experienced an increase in the CAGs, with Molo sub-county currently having more HIV clients embracing this mode of taking ARV drugs, which, according to her, is an upward trajectory given that they have been able to maintain and do follow-ups of the HIV-infected people.
With such interventions, the locals have had ample access to HIV-related services without fear of being victimized and have time to share any relevant information that would be of help concerning this virus.
There has been increased retention in care, reduced time and cost of transport to hospital, which in turn reduces the risks of getting other infections when in the long queues.
On the flip side, the healthcare workers have reduced workloads at the facility and can easily make follow-ups through community health promoters who are used as contact persons to the CAGs in their area.
The government has initiated several interventions in a bid to reduce the prevalence rates of this pandemic within the country.
The interventions include frequent HIV testing; use of self-test kits; HIV advertising in the media that informs and educates about the virus; use of community health promoters in accessing information from the community; mandatory HIV testing during pregnancy; use of ambassadors in the fight against stigma; and condemning retrogressive cultural practices that are a catalyst to the spread of the virus, among others.
According to data from the HIV estimates report released by the National Syndemic Diseases Control Council (NSDCC), Nakuru County is among the top ten counties that recorded a high number of new infections, with 65,149 new HIV infections as compared to the previous year, when it had 58,000 new infections.
The county that recorded the highest number of infections was Kisumu that had 135,550 people living with HIV in 2023.
By Emily Kadzo
