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An additional 450,000 persons living with HIV will be put on treatment by March 2017, a government official has said.
Also, 20,000 individuals who are HIV negative but at risk of contracting the virus will be given the Pre-exposure prophylaxis (Prep) to avert new infections.
National Aids and STI Control Programme (Nascop) director Martin Sirengo said by 2024, all persons living with the virus should be on ARVs.
"We already have a target that by 2019, all the 1.4 million Kenyans with HIV should be on treatment. Currently, we just have 950,000," said Dr Sirengo during the ongoing 10th HIV conference being held in Nairobi.
He said the programme for the 20,000 HIV negative individuals to be put on Prep will run for the next three years, targeting long distance drivers, sex workers, injecting drug users and discordant couples.
Treatment measures
"It may seem unethical to 'treat' HIV negative persons when there is still a gap on those not covered by ARVs, but we are taking both preventive and treatment measures to fight the virus," said Sirengo.
The pill has been mainly on use for discordant couples who wish to have a family the natural way.
However, Sirengo noted that the biggest challenge in treating HIV is the testing of wrong target persons for the virus.
In 2015, out of the 6.5 million individuals tested for the virus, only three per cent or 190, 000 people tested positive.
Sirengo said a task force has already been formed in conjunction with the Ministry of Education to see that teachers are trained and equipped with skills on how to handle HIV positive students.
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