The US has given the Kenyan government a five-year Sh1.3 billion grant to strengthen public health facilities’ ability to handle infectious diseases.The money will be used to equip public health laboratories and train medical staff.
The collaboration named Boresha Maabara (improve laboratory services), is between the Kenya government and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/
It seeks to enhance diagnostic testing for the prevention, surveillance, and treatment of infectious diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis, and other HIV-related opportunistic infections.
The five-year programme, to be overseen by University of Maryland’s Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) Dr Sylvia Ojoo, will be undertaken jointly by the Ministry of Health, the National Public Health Laboratory Services and the Kenya National Blood Transfusion Service.
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
“IHV continues to serve as a true global leader who can effectively partner with varying foreign governments and public-private sector entities to combat infectious disease,” said the Institute’s director, Prof Robert Gallo, who is widely known for his co-discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS and the development of the HIV blood test.
IHV’s Division of Clinical Care and Research, jointly with Kenya’s Ministry of Health and the University of Nairobi have launched a locally developed national HIV integrated training on-site course for health workers.
The course, aimed at reducing the cost of training, replaces the more than 20 different curriculums used to train health workers, who had to stay away from work for several days to undertake the course.