World Bank Pledges Us$50 Million to Fight HIV/Aids

The East African Standard (Nairobi)

March 25, 2003
Posted to the web March 25, 2003

Patrick Wachira And Salome Kyuli
Nairobi

The World Bank has pledged US$50 million (about Sh4 billion) to fight the HIV/Aids scourge, the Government announced yesterday.

The Minister for Health, Charity Ngilu said the National Aids Control Council had another Sh80 million set aside for religious organisations in the country.

She said many organisations were willing to donate funds to fight the spread of the pandemic and assisting the affected and infected "but we do not have the capacity to spend the money".

She described as undesirable the fact that many Kenyans attended burials of HIV/Aids victims every now and then.

"We should not be at funerals every Saturday afternoon."

Ngilu also clarified that she did not advocate abortion for victims of unwanted pregnancies but had asserted that women had a right to decide how many children they will bear and whether or not to bear them.

She pointed out that as many as 8,000 girls were dying from abortion-induced deaths in hospitals after botched-up attempts to rid themselves of the pregnancies.

She urged Kenyans to step up the fight against the HIV/Aids pandemic saying the current situation was still worrying as 50 per cent of bed occupancy in our hospitals was devoted to victims of the scourge.

She was speaking at Mary Ward Centre, Karen, at the start of a joint workshop between the ministry and the Kenya Episcopal Conference on charting the way forward in tackling the scourge.

She paid tribute to the Catholic Church, saying it had spearheaded the struggle for political reform and justice but observed that a lot more work needed to be done.

The minister lashed out at some NGOs, ostensibly involved in anti-HIV/Aids work, saying they were lining their coffers at the expense of the infected, for whose cause they raised huge amounts of cash. Terming them merchants of death, Ngilu said her ministry would neither deal with them nor recognise them as they were only interested in channelling funds to personal use.

The chairman of the Episcopal Conference, John Njue, said that the government had demonstrated that "the era of truth hard work and inclusivity is here".