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Tuberculosis was responsible for the majority of the 21,000 deaths of living with HIV and Aids last year, it has emerged.

This, civil society organisations in the health sector protest, was due to the government’s failure to incorporate the fight against TB in various government policies.

During the World Aids Day celebrations presided over by Health Cabinet Secretary, Dr Deborah Barasa, the CSOs complained that despite TB causing more deaths among Persons Living with HIV, the government has not factored it in the Social Health Authority (SHA).

State policy plans

Dr Samuel Kinyanjui (Country Director, AIDS Healthcare Foundation), Nelson Otwoma (Executive Director, Network Empowerment of People Living with AIDS in Kenya- NEPHAK), and Stephen Anguva, the National Coordinator Network of TB Champions in Kenya, feel that HIV and TB are slighted in major government policy plans.

Whereas there is progress in HIV response in the country, Dr Kinyanjui says that there are a number of concerns that need to be addressed urgently by the government if the 2030 targets on ending AIDS are to be achieved.

“And the number one concern is because of the dwindling funds and the exclusion of people living with HIV from the Social Health Insurance Fund. Because they are listed under pandemic as exclusion, they are also listed as part of the vertical programs and therefore excluded from SHA,” he told People Daily.

Dr Kinyanjui argues that if indeed this year’s World AIDS Day celebrations were about running against time because 2030 is around the corner, basically six years out there, the country wouldn’t have achieved all the targets it planned for at the rate things are moving.

Chronic care

“What we are requesting as civil society is for the government to end the exclusion, and the discrimination by providing cover for them under chronic care,” he said, arguing further that this is because HIV infection is now a chronic medical condition. “It is just like having diabetes or hypertension,” he added, and for this reason they need to be covered under chronic care.

He said only Sh4, 500 per person will be sufficient to provide for their consultation because they visit the facilities four times in a year.

“And to cover their once per year lab tests that are necessary to check their kidneys, check their liver whether it is functioning well, and their thyroid in order to ascertain the medication they are getting are beneficial to them and not harmful to them,” Dr Kinyanjui made the case for the this cohort of patients.

Otwoma said that in Kenya now there is a large cohort of people who are living with HIV, and who are presenting with Non communicable Diseases (NCDs). “So when we talk about hypertension, diabetes, kidney problems, they are also affecting persons living with HIV,” he said, making a case for why this cohort of patients should be included in SHA programmes.

Otwoma said that if you get a person living with HIV in Kenya, usually they are sick from TB. “If you get a person living with HIV who has advanced HIV disease who is dead, it is because of TB,” he said.