This man needs HIV prevention medications. The Kenyan clinics that our financing will soon lose us

Ibrahim Linni lost his parents due to diseases related to HIV when he was fourteen years old. Nairobi’s citizen describes himself as an orphan today-now 43 years old.

The virus also took the lives of some of its uncles, and Lenney, who is gay, believed that he would have become then if it would have been a medication for the revolutionary HIV. He managed to reach prevention before exposure (Prep) for free through clinics in Kenya run by the University of Manitoba, which says clinics serve more than 30,000 customers.

But he may soon lose access to this medicine as US President Donald Trump has moved to reduce spending on foreign aid that funds the university’s sex awareness program, or SWOP, which has been working in Nairobi since the early 1980s. Swop clinics are concerned about what this might mean to their customers and the Kenyan public.

“We have been maintained mainly,” said Nairobi’s headmaster, Larry Gillon,

Their funding comes from the Pepfar Emergency Emergency Plan, a global health fund that aims to combat HIV/AIDS launched by US President George W. Bush in 2003. Trump the Great. Tax and spending bill He tried to reduce $ 400 million, scheduled for Labarfar in 2026, however This financing has been restored After several members of the Republican Senate.

However, the The New York Times reported The Trump administration was blocking more than half of the Bippar boxes for the next fiscal year. CBC News has communicated with the United States government to comment on not allocating Pepfar financing, but she has not heard in time to publish.

Programs that provide medicines and condoms have had a serious impact on HIV/AIDS transmission rates in the country. In the mid -1990s, about 10 percent of the Kenyans lived with HIV. As of 2023, this decreased to 3.2 percent according to United Nations diseases of AIDS, however, the country still has the highest rate of HIV in the world.

Search for another financing

GelMon and his team have reached a plan to avoid the full closure of all ten SWOP clinics they run via Nairobi. They will use emergency funds from the university – a stop gap while trying to secure more funding.

“Basically, it keeps three open clinics with a very three -month skeleton crew, keeping our original clinic for another year, again with the skeleton staff,” Gilon said.

A handful of workers will remain in every clinic, but he says that the rest will be demobilized, with notifications that have already been sent to more than 100 employees will disappear at the end of the month.

Unless other financing clinics discover, patients like LWININGI will not be able to reach the preparation until the end of the year. He did not discover what he would do if he could not get the medicine.

“Believe me, if there is no preparation, I will be positive for HIV,” he said.

“Because of the challenges I faced, I did not want my son to go through the challenge of not having someone to support him,” Linni said, recalling what he passed when he was a child.

GelMon says they have applied for a number of grants and sent an unwanted financing request to Global Affairs Canada, but he made it clear that US financing discounts had created “fierce competition” for any remaining grant.

They say they were told in a letter rejecting one of the grants they submitted because there are more than 300 applicants.

The problem of public clinics

SWOP clinics also provide free antiviral therapy (ART) for people with HIV, but this will also approach its end, says Gelmon. Their customers will have to obtain their medicines from public clinics, which some say they stigmatized in the past.

Gladice Instaacong is a sexual factor that lives with HIV, which reaches SWOP services in a clinic at the eastern end of Nairobi. She is a parameter there too.

“They are mocking you,” she said, while she was crying, stinging her worrying experience in the country’s public health system. Like, you, how did you get this disease? “” “

Joyce Adambo, a sexual factor that lives with HIV, stressed that these clinics are more than just clinics – they are safe spaces for this society where people can “gain courage and strength” by talking about HIV without fear of revenge.

“Even if you are mocking me, you cannot reverse the state of HIV,” she said. “If it is not for this clinic, some of us will die now.”

Joshua Kimani, head of clinical services for SWOP, says that these safe spaces are very important because Kenya is a religious state where sexual relations and relationships of the same sex are consuming and illegal-and these values ​​can leak into the general health care system.

“The problem is that the public health sector services are not well funded, and therefore there are many gaps,” he said.

Currently, patients can obtain free prescriptions, immediately in SWOP clinics, which Kimmani says can help stop the spread of sexually transmitted infections immediately.

Without clinics, Kimani says that sexual workers need money to obtain prescriptions. “For them to buy drugs, they have to sell more sex. Thus, more infections.”

GelMon emphasized that the population at risk does not live in a vacuum and can affect others if they have infection.

“By preventing infection in this group, you help protect the greater society from infection.”

“I don’t want to be Dr. Diet again.”

Kimani says he does not give up hope despite canceling their current financing and the fact that they are not guaranteed to grant them any of their grants.

He has been doing this work in Nairobi since 1993, and says although they often faced challenges and layoffs, they have always been able to find some funding.

“We do not want to return to 2004, when people were dying like flies,” he said. “At that time we were only signing death certificates.”

But he says that things have changed over the past few years, and he does not want to return to those times.

“I don’t want to be Dr. Diet again.”