The situation in Kenya is alarming, and even more so since Donald Trump's American government indiscriminately cut aid to African countries through the USAID agency.
Mind you, not everything the US president is doing is to be criticised regardless, but he certainly has some problems with the timing and methods of his drastic decisions.
In the case of Kenya, many organisations, especially those not directly linked to humanitarian projects on the ground, including many so-called ‘facilitators’, have certainly profited from or pocketed some of the funds intended to improve the conditions of poor people, but just as many have launched projects over time that have saved lives or resolved difficult situations.
This is the case with HIV and AIDS.
The data provided by the Hivos Foundation, which has been dealing with HIV-positive people in Sub-Saharan Africa for years, is eloquent. Since Trump cut the funds that allowed, for example,
to receive antiretroviral drugs, which are essential for treating HIV but also for preventing transmission, 6 underage girls in Kenya contract the virus every day.
Added to this is the problem of teenage pregnancies and the transmission of the disease to newborns. In April, schools close for a month and the girls return home to the village. That's when they're most at risk. At least one of USAID's services was the provision of free condoms. Without this, the number of pregnant girls has increased again. Since the beginning of the month, the foundation has already reported 691 cases throughout Kenya.
In addition to creating an incredible number of single mothers, because often the father is unknown or disappears, teenage pregnancies are directly linked to school dropouts. Every holiday period in Kenya is then followed by a significant number of students not returning to the classroom. This had decreased thanks to awareness campaigns (many of which were also funded by USAID) and the distribution of condoms, and now risks creating a domino effect that over time will have repercussions on many other issues, including unemployment food insecurity among children and the need for many young mothers to turn to prostitution as their only means of support, with the risk of transmitting and spreading the HIV virus.