As a woman living with HIV in Kenya, I feel this letter says it all. Kudos to KELIN
It had better not go ignored.

Hello KELIN, Allan and Partners who made this possible
I am thrilled that as a team we have taken a position and, KELIN through Allan and Others have made this viable.
Once again Allan, Thanks for taking this up and doing a fantastic job on the letter.
wariara mugo
advocacy officer
MSF OCP & OCB

Am the author of the article. But what was published was not what I had intended to bring out. My main story was about integrating HIV services with Maternal and Child Healthcare (MCH). The original article had Kakamega Provincial General Hospital as a case study. I had gone on the ground and found out that the integration model had reduce Stigma.

When I talked to Dr Sirengo, he said that Integrating HIV with MCH was the way to go becais.

1. Because it will reduce stigma among HIV reactive mothers. (People do not want to go to a place known to everybody that it is a facility for HIV services. But at the MCH facility, it is not possible to tell why one is there.

2. We now have experts who can handle HIV. In the past days, just a handful of medical experts could handle the disease because it was a new disease. – it was not part of their training. But now we have enough technical staff.

3. We have drugs – though not enough. At least people can access life saving medication – which is better that what was happening earlier when people looked at HIV as a ‘death sentence’.

However, the editor stripped the article of all the important information and instead edited it to what was published in the papers. He deleted all the important info from Kakamega. (But remember – ‘The editor has the powers to edit, reduce, or refuse to use any article brought before him/her’).

THE IDEA WAS NOT TO STRIP HIV OF ITS SPECIAL STATUS – BUT TO CHANGE THE STRATEGY OF HANDLING THE DISEASE.

I have informed him of the communication though.

Great job as always, thanks KELIN! — and what grievous harm was done to the article. Just like the CSO letter says, *integration* is a beneficial principle and *should* be pursued as long as we can maintain quality. The issue was the language used by the NASCOP official, which threatens to kill the momentum for funding HIV and overall health in the country.

Unless Dr. Sirengo was misquoted, then we’ll need to continue to push for a public retraction.

Allan and partners,

Thanks for the good work. Keep it up!

Hi all,
Thanks Allan for the good job and well done to all those who contributed. I see the contents of the letter have been captured in today’s nation pg.9. There are few issues to do with editing (especially of the names of the organisations ), but it is good that our views went public- Thinking aloud: perhaps we can follow up with the journalist to write a follow up of the piece and focus on our reasons for opposing? That would be great!

Best wishes,
Kind Regards,

Renaldah Mboje Mjomba
HIV and AIDS Policy and Advocacy Adviser
Policy Group
VSO
 
P.O. BOX  49843,00100,Nairobi.
Argwings Kodhek Road,Timau Plaza, Nairobi
Phone: +254 (20)/5016000/5016108
Read latest blogs on http://blog.vsointernational.org

Thanks for all your efforts Allan and all others who contributed. Let’s take this forward. Good work!

Great work, Kelin. It’s good to see the clarifications on the situation. Indeed integration might help reduce stigma but organisations like Kelin need to ensure this is not done at the cost of de-prioritising HIV. The approach should be to ensure that the focus and quality given to HIV treatment and care, is scaled up to the rest of the health service.