Kenyan HIV patients live in fear as US aid freeze strand drugs in warehouse

The health clinic where Alice Okwirry collects her HIV medication in Kenya's capital Nairobi has been rationing supplies of antiretrovirals (ARVs) to one-month refills since the US government froze foreign aid.

On the outskirts of the city, millions of life-saving doses sit on the shelves of a warehouse, unused and unreachable.

The clinic is a 30-minute drive from the warehouse, but for Okwirry, they may as well be an ocean apart.

Without US funding, distribution from the warehouse, which stocks all US government-donated HIV medicine to Kenya, has ceased, leaving supplies of some drugs worryingly low, according to a former USAID official and a health official in Kenya.

The 90-day foreign aid freeze, ordered by US President Donald Trump, has upended the global supply chain for medical products to fight HIV and other diseases. It is also blocking the distribution of drugs that long ago reached their destination countries.

“I was seeing death coming,” said 50-year-old Okwirry who was diagnosed with HIV in 2008 and has a 15-year-old daughter, Chichi, who is also HIV-positive.

Okwirry used to receive six-month supplies of ARVs from the clinic but can only get one month.

“I told Chichi: what about if you hear the drugs are doomed?” Okwirry said, growing emotional. “She told me: 'Mom, I'll be leaning on you.'”

The US state department issued a waiver last month exempting funding for HIV treatment from the freeze.

However, the USAID payments system in Kenya is down after the cuts, meaning contractors who implement the programmes cannot be paid, said Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, who was the deputy head of communications for USAID East Africa, until resigning on February 3 in protest at the dismantling of the agency.

"[Implementers of] Projects are left wondering: 'How am I going to resume activities if you're not paying me?'” he said.

“The waivers that have been given are waivers on paper.”

Officials in Washington have not authorised the release of money required to distribute the $34m (R621m) worth of medicine and equipment at the warehouse, he said.

According to a Kenyan government document seen by Reuters, about $10m (R183m) is needed for distribution. The Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies (Meds), the Christian charity that runs the warehouse, supplies drugs to 2,000 clinics nationwide, according to its website.

Knowles-Coursin said the commodities at the warehouse include:

• 2.5-million bottles of ARVs;
• 750,000 HIV test kits; and
• 500,000 malaria treatments.

USAID referred a request for comment to the state department, which did not respond. Meds did not respond to requests for comment.

Kenya's health minister Deborah Barasa said she expected her government to mobilise funds to allow supplies at Meds to be released within two to four weeks.

“We have identified the resources required,” she said.

Kenya has the seventh-largest number of people living with HIV in the world, at about 1.4-million, according to World Health Organisation data. The president's emergency plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), the main US vehicle for funding HIV treatment, supplies 40% of Kenya's HIV drugs and supplies.

A health official in Kenya, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said stocks of two critical HIV treatments, Dolutegravir and Nevirapine, were low but did not know exactly how much remained nationwide.

Dolutegravir is often used to treat coinfections of HIV and tuberculosis. Nevirapine is often used to prevent mother-to-child transmission.

Barasa said there would be enough Dolutegravir to last five months and Nevirapine to last eight months once the Meds stocks were released.

For the time being, some patients can only get refills of their ARVs for one week at a time, said Nelson Otwoma, director of the National Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/Aids in Kenya.

Lawsuits aiming to compel the Trump administration to restore funding for humanitarian programmes and reinstate thousands of fired or furloughed USAID workers are working their way through US courts.

On Monday, secretary of state Marco Rubio said the Trump administration has cancelled more than 80% of all USAID programmes.

The Kenyan government's council on syndemic diseases estimated in an internal brief last month, seen by the Reuters, that the US cuts had created funding gaps of about $80m (R1.4bn)

Finance minister John Mbadi told senators last week the government was reviewing whether to allocate emergency funding to compensate for US aid cuts before it delivers the 2025/26 budget later this year.