SPEECH BY THE FIRST LADY OF THE REPUBLIC OF KENYA,

H.E. MARGARET KENYATTA AT th7TH AFRICA CONFERENCE

ON SEXUAL HEALTH AND RIGHTS AND LAUNCH OF A
UNITED CONTINENTAL ALL-IN ADOLESCENTS HIV
CAMPAIGN, ACCRA, GHANA ON THE 11TH FEBRUARY 2016
Your Excellency Dr. Lordina Dramani Mahama, our
gracious host, the First Lady of The Republic of Ghana
and President of OAFLA.
Thank you for your warm welcome to your lovely
country.
All the First Ladies present here today,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Kenya, together with the rest of the Africa, adopted a common
position to end HIV/ AIDS and stigma among the adolescents
and young people. This pledge was made in 2015, during
Worlds Aids Day. At that time, we launched the DREAMS
Initiative, focussing on adolescents and young girls who are the
most vulnerable and affected. DREAMS seeks to inspire
Determination, Resilience, and Empower AIDs-free Mentored
Safe women.
Our efforts are aligned to OAFLAS overall objective of an AIDs
free generation, to offer our young children a better future.
That is the Africa we want!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Kenya is in the acceleration phase, working towards elimination
of mother to child HIV infections.
There is a sense of urgency to scale up our health systems,
apply impact and evidence based interventions, increase
awareness testing services, increase resource allocation and
strengthen our overall health system delivery.

Towards this end, we seek to apply right decisions, right

recommendations and engage sustainable partnerships.
Kenyas Fast Track Plan launched by His Excellency the
President in 2015 is a two year to fast track our national targets
towards a 75% reduction of HIV by 2017.
The ALL-IN campaign, also launched in Kenya in February
2015 adopts a coordinated multi-sectoral response to end new
infections and AIDs related deaths among adolescent and
young people.
Engaging our youth, who stewards and champions of the ALLIN campaign, is essential. The campaign has embraced
relevant communication platforms, applied action plans, and
committed youth investment funds with specific targets.
The youth are our greatest asset. We need to do far more than
we are doing for the youth at the moment.
Education is also critical to increasing awareness. The Ministries
of Education and Health together introduced HIV education in
schools to influence behaivour change and reduce HIV
vulnerability among our youth in Kenya.
Income inequalities and economic dependency compromises
the negotiating power of women and young girls. As a result,
the girls are recorded to have largest number of HIV cases. It
was therefore decided that 2016 be dedicated as the year of
Rights of Women. Women must be able to make decision
around their health choices.
Ladies and Gentlemen, With a committed leadership at all
levels, we can collectively achieve goals to reverse the trend of
new HIV infections in Africa.
As I conclude, I wish to join the First Ladies of Africa in the call
for a collective effort to end the HIV pandemic in Africa.
Thank you for your attention.