Another VCT for the Deaf Opened

From: AllAfrica.com, Africa - Sep 1, 2004

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
NEWS
September 1, 2004
Posted to the web September 1, 2004

By Standard Team
Nairobi

The second Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centre (VCT) for deaf people has been opened in Mombasa.

The centre, Liverpool Voluntary Counsellling Centre (LVCT), is linked to the School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool, UK.

There are only two such facilities in sub-Saharan Africa. The first one was opened in Buru Estate, Nairobi, last year.

The LVCT director, Ms Sarah Jones, said the centre, located at the General Post Office Hall, had already received 80 patients since opening on July 12, this year. She said according to statistics, the ratio of men to women visiting the facility was seventy to thirty.

A representative from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the sponsors of the facility, Ms Elizabeth Marum, said several other countries including South Africa and America had contacted them to learn more about them. Marum said a US senator had written to them. A third centre will be launched in Kisumu next month.

Meanwhile, the National Aids Control Council will start providing free generic anti-retroviral drugs to about 160,000 Aids patients at a cost of Sh480 million by the end of this year.

The council's public sector manager, Mr Joshua Ng'eru, yesterday said although Kenya has an estimated 2.5 million people who are HIV positive, not all of them require ARVs.

He was reacting to a question from Central Provincial Commissioner Peter Raburu, who wanted to know why ARVs were not available at the village level.

Ng'eru was speaking during the opening of a four-day training workshop organised by the Constituency Aids Control Committee in Nyeri.

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