More than 1,000 Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYWs) aged 15-24 in Turkana South have benefited from a five-day HIV outreach rolled out by Kenya Red Cross and the Africa Inland Church Health Ministries (AICHM) as part of the HIV prevention and control program supported by the Global Fund.
Services, including HIV counselling and testing, behaviour change communication, and distribution of sanitary pads, were jointly offered by the recently trained peer educators and the area’s health workers at Lokichar, Katilu, and Kalemgorok sites.
Abel Murei, the program’s Monitoring and Evaluation officer, said that Turkana South was one of three identified hotspots, alongside Turkana West, Turkana North and Central, where the AGYWs also happened to be the most at-risk population.
“Beyond the outreach, the peer educators have also been deployed at the village level and allocated households. They remain responsible for ensuring that adolescents girls and young women in those households continuously access HIV/AIDS services,” he said.
According to Geoffrey Ekiru, an HIV/AIDS service provider at Kalemgorok, the area has been reporting new cases among the 15-24 age group in recent months, calling for concerted efforts to cut the spread.
“It is true that our facilities have reported new cases among the youth in recent months. The Global Fund program now makes it possible for us to extend services to adolescent and young women, to tell them that HIV is real, and encourage them to adopt behaviours that keep them out of risk,” he said.
Damaris Lokoel, a 20-year-old peer educator during the outreach, attributed the success of the outreach to the training they recently received from AICHM.
“We were able to talk to our peers about practical methods of HIV prevention, STI prevention, condom use, menstrual hygiene, such as use of sanitary pads, and ways of reducing risky behaviours that expose one to either gender-based violence or HIV/STIs infection. It was not difficult because the AGYWs saw us as their age mates,” she said.
Another peer educator, 21 year-old Faith Ekale, shared that the girls she had talked to over the outreach period stopped or minimized frequenting bars and highways to exchange sex for favours.
“I am confident that the peers we mobilized to access services during the outreach and those we personally visited for one-on-one private sessions are fully empowered to take control of their lives,” she said.
Despite the county’s overall HIV prevalence rate standing at 2.19%, which is lower than the national average estimated at 5.4% to 5.9%, reports at the county and national levels say that the region faces a worrying surge in infection of the adolescent and young persons aged 15-24 years.
According to Abel Murei, the ongoing Global Fund HIV program intends to run more outreaches in the identified hotspots over the next two months alongside other programs targeting boys, young men and the fisher folk community.
“Now that we have sufficiently trained and equipped peer educators, the primary goal is to make a contribution to the national objective, which is to cut new infections by up to 75%, reduce HIV-related deaths by 50%, address teenage pregnancies, and keep the 15-24-year age group safe from potential exposure to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).”
