Foreign funds provide needed drugs for AIDS patients at Kenyan clinic

Published: 2004-05-26

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNS) -- As a clinical officer at the bustling St. Vincent's Integrated TB/HIV Clinic in Nairobi, Walter Kizito spends his days giving medicine to tuberculosis and HIV-positive patients. Most of the people Kizito sees live in a sprawling slum across the street from the clinic. The majority of them lack clean, running water and toilet facilities and live on less than $1 a day. Until now, St. Vincent's Clinic, owned by the Archdiocese of Nairobi, was unable to give out lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to its patients living with HIV/AIDS. But, because of funding from a five-member consortium headed by Catholic Relief Services, the clinic will offer a five-year program in which several hundred men, women and children will be put on antiretroviral therapy. This is good news for Maryknoll Father Edward Phillips of Boston, managing director of the Archdiocese of Nairobi's AIDS relief program. Low-income people traditionally have been barred from receiving antiretroviral treatment, which was prohibitively expensive before the recent introduction of generic drugs.

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