Break the cycle of poverty and disease in Kenya

SOTENI One-Year COVID Report - April 2021

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, SOTENI’s outreach to rural Kenya in the fight against HIV/AIDS has remained steady over the past year, thanks to supporters like you and GlobalGiving. SOTENI remains resilient and committed to its mission of preventing the effects of infectious diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, and now COVID-19 through community-driven solutions in Kenya. 

AIDS Barefoot Doctors outreach to 2,535 people living with HIV/AIDS

Over the past year, SOTENI's core program “AIDS Barefoot Doctors” -which serves 2,535 people living with HIV/AIDS every month - has complied to the regulations set by the Kenyan Ministry of Health to ensure the safety of both field staff and support group members.  Effective April 1, 2020 all AIDS Barefoot Doctors’ support group sessions for people living with HIV/AIDS were suspended in order to adhere to the ban on meetings of 10 or more people in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19. It was critical that all members of these support groups continued to receive P&G water purification packets to provide enough safe drinking water to them and their families every month. Therefore an emergency alternative mode of safe, compliant distribution was devised by SOTENI’s COVID-19 taskforce in partnership with SOTENI AIDS Barefoot Doctors on the ground. Furthermore, SOTENI procured and distributed personal protective equipment to each group community leader to keep them safe and protected as they received and distributed packets. And, SOTENI’s emergency COVID-19 relief campaign in April 2020 provided the immediate necessary PPE- thanks again to donors like you! We are grateful to share that Minerva Health Solutions donated additional PPE in November 2020; and has committed to continue to supply PPE to SOTENI Kenya.

Strengthening SOTENI's ongoing response to COVID-19

With donor support, SOTENI implemented four in-house virtual COVID trainings between June 2020 and January 2021. After the first COVID training session, SOTENI staff was able to streamline direct communication between AIDS Barefoot Doctors (ABDs) and SOTENI’s resident volunteer doctors and community health experts. We accomplished this by setting up group chats for real-time communication linking ABDs with our subject matter experts to answer questions about COVID-19, safety protocols and nutrition as our ABDs fielded questions from their group members and ensured their group members were receiving P&G water purification packets. Overall, the trainings equipped our staff, ABDs and personnel with the necessary knowledge and skills of COVID identification, prevention, protective equipment, and care. SOTENI thanks its founder, Dr. Victoria Wells Wulsin for leading these trainings.

 COVID in Kenya today

As of March 28th, 2021 Kenya is experiencing another surge of COVID-19 in Nairobi and four nearby counties around Nairobi. These counties are currently under lockdown with curfews and travel restrictions in place for approximately 30 days, if needed. Kenya has started its first phase of the vaccine rollout targeting high-priority groups, including frontline health workers, between now and June 2021.

Thank you for your continued support of SOTENI’s efforts to ensure some of the world's most vulnerable people - those living with HIV/AIDS in rural sub-Saharan Africa continue to receive quality care and access to safe drinking water as COVID continues to exacerbate the need for such services in Kenya.