Coptic Mission HIV Clinic, Nairobi.
This morning the doctor saw a 34 year old woman at the HIV clinic. In the waiting room, there were already roughly 40 people waiting to be seen at 8:30 am. For patients who fit the algorithm they get ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) at no cost. Of course many of them also have TB and malaria and all those NTDs that everyone is slowly starting to talk about in the discourse on global public health. Many of those other drugs however to treat all the other infectious diseases of course cost money–something which is clearly not abundant here in Kenya. One-third of the city’s population lives in the Kiribi slums I was told today. That is over 1.5 million people. 1.5 million people crammed into a not-so-large area in conditions that you can’t imagine unless you’ve had the opportunity to spend some time in a developing world African slum. And a really bad, dirty, violent one at that. Most of these people aren’t starving and Kenya is not war-torn. These 1.5 million people just have endemic diseases that have long been eradicated from the developed world and live on less than $1 USD a day. However, this is nothing new. Every year more and more people live in urban slums because they offer the best opportunities for employment and education. But this is all obvious and known. How do we fix this? Whose job is it to fix it? Can something be done? Why is it not being done?
