Nairobi: While drugs companies have slashed prices of AIDS medicines, help remains elusive for many Africans, reports Declan Walsh in Nairobi
It wasn't much of a fair trial, but then again justice is also rare for AIDS victims in Africa.
On a Nairobi street, "the people's tribunal" convened. The accused were Western pharmaceutical companies, African politicians and local prejudices; their jurors were 100 local AIDS sufferers. The verdict was unanimous: guilty.
"My family had dreams and ambitions," Ms Renish Achieng, a mother of two, told the crowd. "Now I am dying prematurely. And I cannot afford the drugs to stop it."
In the onion-shaped hall behind her, 6,000 delegates were attending the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa. Doctors, aid workers, priests and even faith healers are seeking a solution to the pandemic described by one UN expert as "the grotesque obscenity of the modern world".
More than 30 million Africans are HIV positive, one-tenth of them infected last year alone.
But out on the street, the disease's Kenyan victims, who could not afford the $50 entry fee, had gathered to tell it like it is.
Ms Rosemary Omuga was one of four eloquent speakers at the demonstration. Her face covered in a rash, the 45-year-old mother wore a wool hat despite the searing heat. When she discovered her status 15 years ago, she said, her husband nearly beat her to a pulp. A year later, still in denial about the disease, he died.
Rosemary could prolong her life with the drugs that have plummeted in price in the past year. These days a month's supply of generic drugs costs about 3,000 Kenyan shillings (€34) a month.
But home for Rosemary is a one-room shack in Kibera, one of Africa's largest slums. She has seven children to feed. The life-saving drugs remain elusive.
"Sometimes I can't even get 10 bob (11 cent) to buy water," she said. "If I have such money, I need it for food or rent." With AIDS at such a pandemic level - two Kenyans die every minute - the optimal price for such drugs is "nothing", said demonstration organiser Gitura Mwaura.
The Western companies, which have slashed prices and donated some drugs, say they cannot do any more. At the GlaxoSmithKline stand inside the conference hall, sales rep Mr Paul Okello said his company could not give the drugs for free because "there aren't enough trained doctors and health centres to deliver them".
Discrimination and denial have hampered Kenya's fight against AIDS. In the daily papers, young faces crowd the death notices, yet bereaved families prefer euphemisms such as "died after a long illness".
When Mr Charles Mwangi came clean with his status, his family spurned him. Speaking to the press would make it worse, he said at the "tribunal".
"I'm going to have hell," he said. "My family will alienate me, they say I am shaming them. But at the end of the day, it's my life."
Although most African leaders are committed to fighting AIDS, few public figures have admitted their status. Kenya's vice-president Mr Michael Wamalwa died in a London hospital last month. His cause of death was unexplained but the fact that his doctor was an AIDS specialist fuelled speculation.
Corruption is also a problem. The director of Kenya's National AIDS Control Council was replaced last month following revelations she earned two million shillings (€23,000) a month, and 94 per cent of the council's budget was disappearing on salaries and overheads.
But there are signs of optimism. This week President Mwai Kibaki introduced a Bill outlawing workplace discrimination against AIDS sufferers, and announced free drugs for 6,000 people - a fraction of the 220,000 infected Kenyans.
Western governments must also deliver. Amid great fanfare earlier this year President Bush announced an AIDS "emergency plan", pledging $15 billion over five years. But so far no extra funding has been budgeted for this year, and only $450 million for next year.
Last week Bono confronted President Bush in the Oval Office over the tardy payments.
"We had a good old row," he said afterwards. "They are just not moving fast enough."
All the pledges in the world may not come fast enough for Charles Mwangi.
His CD4 count - the indicator of the disease's march - is bottoming out fast. He suffers from tuberculosis and a rash is wrapped around his arm; a fungal infection coats his throat.
"I am terrified," he admitted. "When I see how my friends died, it really makes me scared."