Transport costs hinder HIV/AIDs patients from accessing ARVs

Speaking while meeting Health minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng Kekitiinwa said this may affect their health if they consistently miss out the appointments ' Majority of the clients who miss out their appointments say that they lack transport , this means that if they don't take their drugs they may develop resistant virus.

She however said her organisation has embarked on an ambitious programme of implementing differentiated service delivery model, aimed at attaining the 90-90-90 UNAIDS targets. 'The Country is moving away from providing healthcare at the health facilities; we are going in for differentiated service delivery model where it is going to be patient centered.

Patients from one zone will be followed up and will identify one person whom they trust to pick their drugs as long as their virus is suppressed,'Kekitiinwa said the unstable and complex patients like adolescents and children will however still remain under supervision of the health workers on regular intervals. About 66% of new infections happen in adolescent girls.

Baylor treats about 7500 HIV/AIDS and close to 4000 are between the age of 10 and 24. Kekitiinwa asked government to fund HIV/AIDS organisations in areas of research, Laboratory equipment, areas she said international funders were not catering for.

'We have embarked on testing for cervical cancer and other procedures but our progress is heavily restrained by expensive reagents that are beyond our financial means. Aceng noted that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among the youth has gone up instead of going down adding that the interventions that are running to address HIV are not having an impact on the youths or the youths have become complacent.

She said her ministry will do something to address the high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS among the youth since they are the future leaders. 'Most of our interventions will address this age group but we shall not neglect the other groups which are also at potential risk of acquiring the disease,' she said.

She said her ministry is winding up with data collection of the population impact assessment on HIV/AIDS adding that the results are expected to be released by June this year.

'We have begun the analysis of data, the results focused on HIV prevalence in the different regions and also focused on different population groups as well as the groups that are most at risk. We will give information regarding Hepatitis B co-infection with HIV, and all this information will help us in programming as well as setting our interventions,' she said.