Lower Thirds: 

0:10	Report by| Sella Oneko
0:33	'Grace' | Sex worker
1:23	Veronica ‘Achibella’ Were | Sex Workers Outreach Program
1:59	Sella Oneko | DW East Africa Correspondent | Nairobi
2:18	Douglas Bosire | CEO, National Syndemic Diseases Control Council
2:50	Samuel Kinyanjui | Aids Healthcare Foundation
3:29	Veronica ‘Achibella’ Were | Sex Workers Outreach Program

Scipt: 

0:02 

In some parts of Nairobi, sex costs around 1 US dollar. That’s the price of 3 condoms. 

And that itself is a new cost for the city’s sex workers, like 73-year-old Grace, as we’ll call her. We’ve hidden her identity  because sex work is criminalized in Kenya. Until last year, Grace used to get most of her condoms for free.  

Being HIV-positive, she insists her clients use protection. She keeps her medication next to her bed as proof of her status.  

0:32 SOT ‘Grace’ - Sex worker (ENG)  SUBTITLED

These are my antiretrovirals. I keep them close by - because other  people here are very crazy. They don't fear. I have to tell them the truth. You can get HPV through unprotected sex. You can get HIV through unprotected sex. You can get STI, UTIs  through unprotected sex.  

0:52 

That risk is a worry for community advocates like Achibella who supports her fellow sex workers. While just over 3 percent of Kenyans are living with HIV, the number is higher among female sex workers. At 30 percent prevalence, they’re the group most at risk. 

Free condoms were at the heart of Kenya’s HIV prevention program. But the lack of funding since the US aid cuts has crippled the work.  

1:23 Veronica ‘Achibella’ Were – Sex workers outreach program (SWOP) (ENG)  

Before the funding cuts, we had peer educators. Peer educators who were going to the hotspots, they bring for us condoms. They had to record. We had dispensers. Even if you go to the toilet, you will find a dispenser having condoms. Even here in the office, you just talk to  a ‘kasko,’ they bring us condoms so that the sex workers who are around can pass by and pick some.  

1:48 

We make one more stop at a clinic in another part of town.  The staff couldn't talk to us on camera but confirmed that since the cuts they too had a shortage in condoms.  

1:58 

PTC Sella Oneko – East Africa correspondent 

So this is a condom dispenser, an empty condom dispenser in a clinic in Nairobi. And the staff actually told us that when they have enough condoms and they put them here, they disappear within a matter of hours. So that’s how popular this program actually was.  

2:13 

The government acknowledges the scale of the problem in light of the public demand. 

2:18 Douglas Bosire - CEO, National Syndemic Diseases Control Council (ENG) 

When we look at, the total market need for condoms in Kenya, we require each man, each adult man aged between 15 and 49 years requires about 40 condoms per year. Currently we are at the rate of 20. 

2:34  

Samuel Kinyanjui from the NGO, AIDS Healthcare Foundation or AHF, agrees that there needs to be a rethink. But he adds that making condoms in Kenya would be too costly, and that taxes for importing condoms, even free ones, are too high: 

2:49 Samuel Kinyanjui – Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF) (ENG) 

AHF used to bring free condoms for distribution. //Then the donor said, we cannot be able to paying, giving free condoms and also paying the taxes. The government needs to decide. Because this is a social good. We cannot be taxed for a social good. We cannot be taxed to deliver social good. And I know this is the position of most other organizations which we are bringing free for distribution of condoms. So the tax is the biggest barrier we have right now. 

3:16 

Back at her office, Achibella worries about what this means – both for sex workers and Kenyan society as a whole. She still remembers a time when HIV was rampant and there was no proper treatment. 

3:29 Veronica ‘Achibella’ Were  – Sex worker and rights advocate (ENG) 

The way I'm seeing this thing is going - I don't want to say the government - if all of us, we're not going to take precautions, we will go back to the 80s or 90s in HIV.  

3:41 And nobody wants that. So while the system has taken a hit – everyone I spoke to agrees that the gap in prevention, must quickly be closed.