KENPHIA survey flagged off in Nandi
In line with the Presidents Big Four Agenda of Quality and Affordable Health Care, The Ministry of Health together with The National AIDS & STI Control Program (NASCOP) and their partners, The Kenya Population Based HIV Impact Assessment (KENPHIA) recently launched a survey program that is to be conducted Nationwide.
The launch marked the beginning of a six-month fieldwork component which involves survey teams visiting selected households for data collection. In total the survey teams will visit 20,000 selected household distributed across all the 47 counties and interview approximately 35,000 individuals.
In Nandi County, The Governor Stephen Sang launched the exercise, that saw a flagging off of eight teams that comprised field lab technicians, medical officers and counselors. The teams will visit 25 households in 12 clusters and about 300 households in total. The villages participating were randomly selected through multistage double-blind sampling, after statistics was done by The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. The goal of the survey is to estimate the incidence and prevalence of HIV as well as determine the level of HIV Suppression of HIV in Kenya. The survey is a build up of the 5 yearly survey done in the country.
The launch is aimed at sensitizing and increasing awareness on the onset of the collection of data by KENPHIA at the County level, increasing County buy in and encourage the community to participate and to also sensitize the healthcare workers on the exercise and prepare them for linkage services. The launch has brought together all the Stakeholders and Collaborators and created awareness to the members of the County to empower and encourage them to participate in the survey.
In his address The Governor said that the survey will provide information on progress and update on key HIV program initiatives including coverage of HIV testing, care and treatment services, knowledge of HIV indicates in the County and the progress towards elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV and Syphilis. He also further added that, the survey will aid in informing policy, planning and services required to ensure universal coverage of quality HIV prevention, care and treatment services that are critical towards the attainment of the UNAIDS 90-90 GOALS.
The community is hereby urged to turn out and participate in the voluntary based survey and do it willingly as it will give bolder and greater impacts in the society. Courtesy of the partners we can eradicate HIV and reduce its prevalence.