Kenya- Friday 9 April,2021: Antiretrovirals can be really helpful, when it comes to keeping people with HIV healthy and stopping the virus from spreading.

But for the last couple of months, they’ve been hard to come by in Kenya.

Zahra Hassan, from Women Fighting HIV and Aids group said “We don’t want to go back [to a situation] where our health is compromised and we are not able to have access to this key, vital treatment”.

This situation is partly due to a tax dispute between the government and donors who import the drugs.

Health workers on the ground tell a different story though: the Africa Daily team was told access to these life-saving drugs has been a problem for a while.

“It’s a wake-up call for us,” says Dr Catherine Ngugi, who’s head of Kenya’s National AIDS and STI Control Program.

“Plans are under way to ensure that we are self-reliant, not only to procuring the medication using our own funds, but as well setting up our own industries to produce the drugs in the country.”