Fear grows in Kenya for HIV patients as US aid cut halts drugs

Bangkok Post Group

At the Nyumbani Children's Home in Kenya's capital Nairobi, the facility's staff fear for the future of children with HIV/AIDS as U.S. aid cuts threaten to disrupt their vital drug supply. - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00At a children's home in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, children living with HIV-AIDS play.

00:07But the staff here fear for their future, as US aid cuts threaten to disrupt their vital

00:13drug supply.

00:14President Donald Trump's 90-day foreign aid freeze has upended the global supply chain

00:19for drugs to fight diseases including HIV, but it's also blocked the distribution of

00:25drugs that long ago reached their destination countries.

00:29The manager of Nayambani Children's Home, Sister Tresa Palakudi, is concerned about

00:34access to life-saving HIV meds called anti-retrovirals or ARVs.

00:40If you stop ARVs for these children, there is drug resistance, afterwards they will get

00:47all kinds of opportunistic infections, then we lose one by one.

00:55The executive director of the home said that if they start purchasing ARVs, a rough estimate

01:00is $120 per child per month, and that's without other drugs including TB medication and food

01:07supplements.

01:08Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the city, millions of doses of ARVs sit on the shelves of a warehouse,

01:15unused and unreachable.

01:17A Kenya health official said without US funding, distribution of the $34 million worth of medication

01:24sitting there has ceased.

01:26An ex-USAID executive said this stock, which Washington has not released funds to distribute,

01:33includes 2.5 million bottles of ARVs, 750,000 HIV test kits and 500,000 malaria treatments.

01:41In the meantime, Kenya is scrambling to fill the gaps.

01:44We are dependent on Treasury to release funds.

01:47Kenya's health minister, Deborah Barasa, said she expected her government to mobilize funds

01:52to allow the supplies to be released within two to four weeks, but it is not yet clear

01:57whether the government has allocated the money to do so.

02:00Kenyan Christian Charity Med that runs the warehouse and the US State Department did

02:05not respond to requests for comment.

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