Doing all it takes to have young people warm up to HIV care

Jane (not her real name) has lived with HIV for the past 18 years. As a child, her mother would accompany her to the hospital where she would be given anti-retroviral drugs. As she grew older and started understanding her health condition, the girl who was until recently a  Form Four student at a girls’ school in Homa Bay started developing a fear of going to the clinic.

“My mother would still take me to the hospital but I felt as if I should not be there,” Jane says. Part of the reason she did not want to go to the hospital is to avoid stigmatisation from her friends. This was until recently when she was enrolled in a health programme that targets youth living with HIV.

In the programme, hospitals in Homa Bay where HIV management is offered use youth-friendly services to encourage young people to go for care.  Medics also use a language that they can easily relate to and spend more time talking to them than they would do with old patients.

This initiative started when some youths were withdrawing from HIV management because of shame, despite the fact that HIV affects both the young and the old. Medics were getting concerned that most youth did not want to be identified as patients after testing positive.  Some would send their relatives to hospital to collect HIV management drugs for them.

Jane says she also faced the same challenge after joining secondary school four years ago. “What will my friends say when they discover that I am HIV positive? Most of them do not know my condition and I want to maintain it like that,” she says. According to Homa Bay County HIV and Aids coordinator Omondi Obunga, youths are more susceptible to HIV due to ignorance.

Mr Omondi says the main challenge affecting the group is that no one ever talks to adolescents about the risks they put themselves in when engaging in unprotected sex. “Others face stigma and discrimination when they are known to be engaging in active sex. Most parents do not want to talk to their children about sex because of cultural issues yet it is a challenge affecting teenagers,” he says. 

In order to encourage more youths to go to hospital to manage the disease, some hospital staff have dedicated their Saturdays to be days for helping young patients. At the comprehensive care clinic at Homa Bay County Teaching and Referral Hospital, students, some in school uniforms and other youths would walk in every Saturday morning to consult medics.

One of the organisations encouraging establishment of youth-friendly services in hospitals to seek HIV management is Network for Adolescents and Youth for Africa (Naya). Naya regional manager Emmaculate Oliech says adolescents and youths do not seek health services because of certain barriers which her organisation is trying to address. 

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