With some 15,000 delegates due to attend the 15th International AIDS conference in Bangkok on Thursday, Mary Donohoe describes how Kenya is struggling under the pandemic.
A field trip to a HIV/AIDS programme in Kenya left me feeling both uplifted by the people and seriously challenged, nothing could have prepared me for what I was to experience, Whatever you have heard about the devastation of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, the reality is a hundred times worse.
This AIDS programme is located in Nakuru, a town northwest of Nairobi. The population is approximately 350,000. Run by the Franciscan Missionaries Sisters for Africa and a team of 15 Kenyans, it operates in the poorest areas where one in three people are HIV positive, a staggering figure by any standard.
This coupled with 80 per cent unemployment is a severe challenge to a community and yet something about the people left me feeling that we in the West have much to learn from their dignity, humility and courage in the face of such extraordinary suffering.
This suffering has been created by the cruel combination of both AIDS and poverty, one fuelling the other in an endless merciless cycle of destruction.
The programme is home-based and has four components: education, orphan care, HIV/AIDS support and hospice home care.
For the most part, accommodation for these people consists of huts made from plastic and galvanised sheeting. They have no electricity, sanitation or water and vermin running across the floor is not a rare sight. Surrounding the huts are latrines. These horrific living conditions are open prey for the spread of disease, in particular, the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS.
Due to the nature of the transmission of this virus there is usually more than one person in each hut infected and, in some cases, whole families. Frequently, on the street a woman or child approaches the nursing team leading them to their home where another victim to the savage virus awaits their care.
And so the day continues in a relentless race against the havoc wreaked by the most devastating disease humanity has ever known, which in its totally untreated state, is harrowing for its victim, something that we in the West knows little about.
Witnessing humanity at this level is a humbling experience. I was left feeling that their survival in these circumstances is largely dependent on accessing inner resources that the average individual does not access in a lifetime. This super human struggle for survival is manifestly taking its toll.
Living on less than a dollar a day is unconscionable, dying on less than a dollar, unimaginable. We are bombarded by HIV/AIDS statistics every day, so much so that we have become immune to their significance. While this is understandable, a piece of information that I learned there focused my mind, bringing home the tragedy with alacrity.
With a death toll of 500 people a day to the virus, the fastest growing industry in the country is the manufacturing of coffins, both large and very small, in fact the forests have become so depleted the government is currently researching the possibility of substituting wood with plastic. The vision of six bodies stacked on top of each other in the mortuary will remain with me always. I felt diminished in my humanity.
Our failure to act is a moral outrage and will go down in history as genocide by apathy. There is much debate at international level about the availability of anti-retroviral drugs for poorer nations - while this is very important, it would only be an option where there is a medical infrastructure; it has little relevance for the people of Nakuru who are wrestling with hunger and acute poverty and a complete absence of any medical services whatsoever (there is no doctor available to these people) and who for the most part die beaten by the ravages of AIDS without any pain control.
Despite all this and the loss of so many of their people, their spirit is indominatable, resisting despair in the hope that eventually things will change, showing no signs of anger at the indifference of the West and its abysmal failure to address the policies that are strangling their country, rather, at every door smiling faces, bright-eyed children, many of them orphaned, just wanting to play and a welcome that would bring tears to the eyes. At times, the scale of human tragedy was so overwhelming I had to turn away.
Finally there are some positive signs emerging, principally the Kenyans' determination to articulate their own voice and to seek a solution from within their country with or without the assistance of the West. They no longer wish to be passive recipients of others' "charity".
Having said that, it is extraordinary that the notion of sharing poses such an overwhelming threat to the developed world, and yet there is so much to be gained for everyone. It may be an impoverished land - but in human terms, a very rich land.
Following my return to Ireland along with a group of concerned people we established The Rose Charity.
Rose Atieno was a 32-year-old woman whom I cared for while there. She died in a rat-infested hut, in the presence of her husband and two-year-old daughter, both of whom also have AIDS. Her eight-year-old son was caring for all three. He continues to care for his father and sister.
The initial aim of this charity is to provide the Franciscans Missionary Sisters of Africa with a new centre for the programme. This will incorporate a medical clinic and laboratory. They are currently operating out of a disused 40-foot container given to them by Goal some years ago.
Mary Donohoe completed her nursing training in St Vincent's University Hospital Dublin before completing a master's degree in psychotherapy at UCD. As a mother of two children, she went to Africa to witness at first hand the devastation caused by AIDS. On her return she established the Rose Charity.
The Rose Project bank account is at Bank of Ireland, Account No: 64473851. The charity can be contacted at The Rose Project, PO Box 9631, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. Tel: 086-067 4770.