Health Action AIDS Itinerary - Tuesday, Nov. 13
Nov 13th, 2007 by Lissy Desantis
As promised in my previous post, I’ll be sharing the plans of the Health Action AIDS delegation each day. Today our group will visit two hospitals and meet with two partner organizations.
9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Visit to Mbagathi District Hospital
This tour will be led by Dr. A.J. Suleh, Chairman of the Health Rights Advocacy Forum and Chairman of the Kenya Medical Association’s Nairobi branch. Mbagathi District Hospital is a key health facility in Nairobi, and has been at the heart of providing comprehensive HIV/AIDS care in the face of the unfolding epidemic in Kenya. Mbagathi handles 10,000 patients, 1,000 of whom are children. The hospital also has 5,000 adults and 500 children on antiretroviral therapy and performs 150 consultations daily. Mbagathi District Hospital offers VCT, DTC, PICT, and PMTCT services, as well as TB care and counseling, among other services.
Mbagathi is a public health facility funded by the Kenyan government, and it also receives support from the international donor community, including the Clinton Foundation. As a provider of comprehensive HIV/AIDS care and treatment, a recipient of public funding and a target for international funding, Mbagathi District Hospital is critical for identifying advocacy needs for health workers in Kenya.
The PHR delegation will first meet with senior MDH staff for an overview of services offered, as well as recent successes and challenges in providing HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. The delegation will then tour the complete hospital facilities, including the wards, and have a chance to shadow MDH nurses and doctors and exchange with Kenyan colleagues.
11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Visit to Kenyatta National Hospital and Voluntary Counseling and Testing Center
Kenyatta National Hospital is the largest referral, teaching and research hospital in Kenya, located in the heart of Nairobi. Since 1987 it has been “parastatal,” meaning that it is owned partly by the government, which helped it improve efficiency. It also opened up a private wing to increase its financial base and improve quality of service, known as the “Amenity Wards.” KNH currently has 4,000 staff and 1,800 beds. The average annual outpatient attendance is 600,000 visits, and the average annual inpatient attendance is 89,000 patients.
The PHR delegation will meet the Chief Executive Officer of KNH, Dr. Jotham Micheni, as well as other members of senior management. This will be followed by a brief tour of the facility, which will lead to the Voluntary Counseling and Testing Center, where the delegation will meet with Dr. David Bukusi and other members of his staff. Dr. Bukusi is the VCT manager and a practicing psychiatrist with extensive experience in providing health care and psychosocial support for health workers. He was responsible for implementing a project with Family Health International which drastically improved uptake of VCT services by KNH health workers.
2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Visit with the Women Won’t Wait Campaign, hosted by Action Aid International Kenya
The Women Won’t Wait Campaign is an international coalition of organizations and networks working to promote women’s health and human rights in the struggle to address HIV/AIDS and to end all forms of violence against women and girls. The campaign focuses on the links between violence against women and girls and the spread of HIV and aims to ensure that women and girls’ vulnerabilities to HIV are reduced, that their human rights are protected and that there is an emphasis on building gender equality and women’s empowerment as a strategy to stem the epidemic. One of the campaign objectives is to formulate and improve policies, programs, advocacy and services that better integrate HIV and violence against women and girls, as well as to increase the level of financial and human resources committed by governments and donors to violence against women in and of itself and as part of the response to HIV/AIDS. In Kenya, the campaign is coordinated by Action Aid International Kenya. PHR’s partner in Kenya, the Health Rights Advocacy Forum (HERAF) is represented on the Women Won’t Wait Campaign Task Force.
The Women Won’t Wait campaign and the Stop AIDS Now! campaign are the two premier advocacy campaigns in Kenya addressing HIV prevention, treatment and care specifically for women and girls.
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Meeting with the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF)
AMREF’s mission in Kenya is to improve the health of poor and disadvantaged groups, to help them escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives. Currently, AMREF has five priority intervention areas in Kenya, including safe water and sanitation, malaria control, clinical services and disaster management, HIV/AIDS, TB and STIs, and family health. AMREF’s HIV/AIDS programmatic work includes providing community-focused prevention initiatives, building capacity among health workers to fight HIV/AIDS and providing integrated rural and urban initiatives to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
AMREF also runs several clinics, one of which is based in Machakos, approximately 2 hours outside of Nairobi. This clinic has been able to integrate women’s services, including family planning and reproductive health services, with HIV prevention, care and treatment. While we will not be able to visit this clinic, we can discuss both the successes and challenges that AMREF has faced in providing this type of women-friendly service in Kenya, which will help to inform the Health Action AIDS Women’s Prevention platform. The delegation can also explore ways to collaborate in advocating for women’s empowerment as a central component of HIV/AIDS planning and programming.