Hospital faced with shortage of self-testing kits

There has been a shortage of HIV testing kits at the Kiambu level 5 Hospital since April 2019 following an increase of patients seeking the service.
Elizabeth Nyoike a HIV/AIDS attendant at Kiambu Level 5 Hospital told KNA that it was important that the government intervened to restock the hospital with the kits which would help people to know their status and take control of their lives through the right measures.
“The last time we received kits from the relevant supplier was four months ago and since then, we have been carrying out the normal procedures only,” revealed Ms. Nyoike
“We dispensed 75 gadgets in July, whose number then increased to 130 by October and by February this year, over 200 kits had been offered to the public,” Ms. Nyoike said
According to Ms. Nyoike, these testing apparatus are important as patients are not forced to wait in the long queues in health facilities for the nurse to physically conduct the process which takes roughly less than 10 minutes.
The kits being free, patients were able to test themselves at the comfort of their homes without a second person witnessing the results.
The shortage has changed the scenario as patients have to now physically avail themselves at the hospital where full diagnosis is carried out to ascertain their status so that those who test positive are put on treatment and those who are not are also cautioned against possible infection.
The gadgets are not just given to anyone who visits the center and request for them without proper advice, she said.
“We issue the kits to a specific target audience to curb wastage of the same and hence we will be able to help even more people if we received more,” said the attendant.
Additionally, persons whose spouses have been unable to seek partner testing due to various reasons could be given extra kits so as to conduct the exercise at home.
Before being issued with the kits, the patients are first counseled then trained on how to operate them thus enabling more people to know their status without necessarily queuing for the same in the hospital which is an advantage owing to the shortage of health workers.
Moreover, she stated that the gadgets were mostly meant for the locals who fear revealing their status while in the presence of medical practitioners therefore the need for restocking.
Kiambu hospital administrator Mr. Eston Mbuthia regretted that the problem lay on the National AIDS and STIs Control Programme (NASCOP) who have not been supplying the self-testing kits for a couple of months.
Moreover, Mbuthia stated that the normal testing which involves direct removal of blood from patients was still fully functional.
“Before the supply gets to us, we urge the residents to seek the normal procedure if they need their HIV status checked,” said the Administrator.
Ms. Nyoike is optimistic that the testing apparatus would soon be available so that people all over the county could continue accessing the service that also cuts their travelling costs to facilities far away from their homes.
NASCOP was established in 1987 to spearhead the Ministry of Health’s interventions on the fight against HIV/AIDS. It operates as a unit within the Ministry of Health and mainly involve technical coordination of HIV/AIDS programmes in Kenya.
By Harry Kamanda/ Lydia Shiroya