UoN,USAID Fahari ya Jamii Project cares for 65,000 people living with HIV/AIDS

The University of Nairobi in partnership with USAID, through the Fahari ya Jamii project has so far reached  65,000 people living with HIV and AIDS, this is inclusive of children, infants and teenagers in Nairobi and Kajiado Counties.

This was revealed through a courtesy call that the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, USAID, Ms Maury Barry Boyle paid on the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Stephen Kiama on Friday May 13, 2022.

“We are all about improving the lives and health of people, we are keen on shaping our partnerships, we would like to elevate the voices of our partners,” remarked Ms Maury Barry Boyle.

Ms Boyle promised that USAID is transforming its approach of implementing its projects and supporting

The Fahari ya Jamii project started in 2021 and will run for five years. USAID has donated USD 9.2M every year making it a total of USD 48M.

The Collaboration also supports Covid-19 vaccination in the same counties.

“So far, we have a 48% and 27% covid vaccination uptake in Nairobi and Kajiado counties respectively,” reported the Chief of Party, Ms Reson

As she reported on the challenges she said, “The major challenges we face in the programme is managing the risk of participants dropping out of treatments. This has particularly been noticed among the middle aged women.”

“In addition, we are proud to report that the child protection policy that we have been working on has been approved and trainings will be offered to our employees as of next week.” Said Ms Renson

On his part, Prof. CF Otieno, UoN Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases (UNITID) was grateful for the partnership and the visit made by the USAID delegation. He highlighted the transformational approach that the two organizations have employed to be able to implement the project thus far.

“There has been a transformational approach, co-creation of strategies with the county governments, there has been institutional support. Over 1000 employees benefit from this project monthly.” He explained.

The University of Nairobi also partners with other social and health  impact programmes like Feed the Future, Health IT and One Health.