Kenya HIV treatment 'thrown back two decades': Maintain Hope

A successful HIV treatment campaign in Kenya has been thrown back by two decades following the Trump-Musk closure of USAID last January, writes Brian Byrne. That's according to the Kilcullen-based Maintain Hope charity founder, Gerry O'Donoghue.

Most of the families supported by the small charity, in Ngong outside Nairobi, are in a community ravaged by HIV. When Maintain Hope was established in 2006, that was a highly stigmatised situation, with women dying because they hid the disease, resulting in many orphaned children.

"But gradually, workshops in the slums and the availability of retroviral drugs helped these women to manage their condition and live full family lives," Gerry O'Donoghue told the Diary at the recent Coffee Morning hosted by Esther Reddy and Joe Dooley and their family. However, 90 percent of the retroviral medicine came through USAID, and with their programme 'fed into the wood-chipper' by Elon Musk on behalf of President Trump, literally overnight the clinics were closed. 

Maintain Hope was able to step into the gap and provide money to provide the medicines to their families, but there are countless others who don’t have anybody to turn to. "It’s going to lead to a lot of unnecessary, preventable deaths," Gerry O'Donoghue says. "They’re now going back to that original cycle where children become motherless and fatherless and will be farmed out to various unsuitable accommodations.”

Maintain Hope currently supports 82 Kenyan children within their families to ensure they are healthy and can continue education through primary, secondary and even third level. In the coming month a dozen Kilcullen area volunteers are going to Ngong to help and assess how best to advance the charity's work. It’s a revival of Maintain Hope’s early days volunteering programme which helped to build facilities at the original Ngong children’s home. “This time it’s about capacity building, liaising with the local people to see how future volunteers might best help out the children and the communities.”

Maintain Hope is funded by many small initiatives and helps a very small number of people in the larger scheme of things. But for every child aided to learn and live a fuller life, the beneficial ripple effect for the future of their families and community is beyond measure.

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