New cases of HIV infection and other opportunistic diseases are going unreported due to the ongoing nurses strike country wide.
Kenya National Union of Nurses (KNUN) Mombasa branch secretary general, Peter Maroko said many Voluntary and Counseling Centers (VCT) which were being ran by public hospitals are not operational since the nurses strike began three months ago.
Maroko said that failure by the government to document the number of new HIV infections would lead to an increase in new HIV infections which would go undetected and unaccounted for for a long period of time thereby creating a major crisis in the health sector.
“New cases of HIV infections are going untested and those who are lucky to get tested by mostly lab technicians they do not get necessarily attention like pre and after counseling. Just imagine how many Kenyans can afford the testing charges of over Sh 600 in a private hospital,” he posed.
He pointed out a most recent case, where a Tuberculosis Patient had developed the multi-resistant type of T.B after his case went undiagnosed since testing services were not available.
