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Women Rep urges donors not to cut HIV fund

Health & Science

By LONAH KIBET

Kenya: Homabay Women Representative Gladys Wanga is appealing to the donor community to reconsider their plans of cutting funds for HIV/AIDS programs.

Wanga says plans to reduce the global fund will greatly hamper the gains made so far in fighting the scourge through sustainable treatment.

The MP says that women will be the worst hit if the donors pull out significantly saying the government may not be in a position to bridge the gap immediately.

“Women are the faces of HIV/AIDS as they bear the greatest brunt of either suffering from the disease or nursing the patients, so any reduction in funding will lead to massive deaths,” she said.

Currently, the donor community fund close to 80 percent of programs aimed towards providing ARVs to HIV positive people in Kenya but uncertainty looms over the future of donor funding of the fight against HIV and Aids, malaria and tuberculosis, with revelations that donors want the government to fund such programs.

However, Wanga says that in as much as the government should increase its budgetary allocation to the health sector, the donors funding too is very critical.

“95 per cent of HIV treatment and support is dependent on donor community and any reduction should be done systematically to allow the government put its house in order,” she said at parliament buildings Friday.

Wanga, who is eying for the chairmanship of the crucial house departmental committee on Health, says her Homabay county will be affected most if the funds were cut.

“In my county, the AIDs prevalence stands at 17 percent against the national average of 7 percent, and so you can see the number of deaths we will record if donors cut amount of support that patients receive,” the MP added.

Wanga said she hoped the Jubilee Government will make good their pledge in providing free maternal services and increase funding to the health sector.

According to the legislator, Kenya still lags behind in achieving the Abuja Declaration that provides for 15 per cent of a national budget towards the health sector.

She said if elected chair of the health committee, she will sponsor a bill similar to the CDF Act, to provide a legal framework of achieving the target of 15 percent to the health ministry.

Last week, the civil society raised concerns on the sustainability of President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) among others to fund the health care. There have been fears that PepfarFAR is likely to cut down in most countries.

A combined force of Pepfar and Global Fund has supported more than 80 per cent of the HIV programmes in Africa so far.

In 2012 alone Pepfar supported 5.1 million people living with HIV and Aids with antiretroviral treatment.

It has facilitated HIV testing and counselling of more than 46.5 million people besides providing 750,000 women with antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission and by so doing enabling 230,000 infants to be born HIV-free.

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