Study shows four youths contract HIV every hour

Director national AIDS Control council (NACC) Nduku Kilonzo gives an overview of the Maisha HIV and AIDS conference,objectives and themes at the sarova panafric hotel.PHOTO DAVID GICHURU

At least four people aged between 15 and 24 are infected with the HIV virus every hour, a new report has revealed.

And three of them are either young women or girls.

The new report by the National Aids Control Council (NACC) stated that 97 youths between the age of 15 and 24 are infected with HIV daily.

At the same time, 60 per cent of the new infections among children in 2015 were from mothers diagnosed late in their pregnancy or while attending post-natal services. There were 6,613 new infections among children in the period.

The prevalence among the youths, according to the report, contributed to 51 per cent of all 77,647 new infections among adults in 2015, which is a rise from 29 per cent in 2013.

This means there were 35,776 new HIV infections among the young population, pushing the number of this demographic living with the virus to 268,586.

Consequently, there were 3,853 documented deaths among this population that were related to HIV complications.

According to the report that has been described as 'so close' to the reality on the ground by NACC Director Nduku Kilonzo, there are 1.5 million people living with the virus in the country.

BIGGEST PROGRESS

But she noted that the biggest progress in the fight against HIV was in the reduction of new infections among children that went down by 49 per cent between 2013 and 2015.

"More than half (24) out of the 47 counties registered reductions in child infections," she said.

However, Ms Kilonzo said only seven counties registered below the five per cent new infections rate as per the goal for 2019. They are Nairobi, Nyeri, Kiambu, Nandi, Nakuru, Elgeyo Marakwet and Bungoma.

Others were above five per cent, with Wajir and Mandera registering over 40 per cent prevalence.

But due to the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) initiative, 97,000 child HIV infections were averted in 2013 through 2015.

This was from 22 counties achieving PMTCT coverage of 80 per cent or more. And out of these, 13 had more than 90 per cent, among them Kilifi, Kajiado, Nakuru and Migori.

Further, 423,000 HIV and Aids related deaths were also averted in the last two years from Government efforts to scale up the uptake of anti-retrovirals.