Nearly half of new HIV infections in Kenya are among adolescents, a major drugmaker claimed during an international conference focused on the wellbeing of girls and young women. “In Kenya, 49% of new #HIV infections occur among adolescents,” tweeted Johnson & Johnson, a sponsor of the June 2019 Women Deliver conference, held in Vancouver, Canada.
Is this claim accurate? We checked.
The claims were direct quotes from a session on maternal and child survival, Nicole Araujo, a Johnson & Johnson spokesperson, told Africa Check. They were said by Dr Violet Oramisi of Kenya’s health ministry, Araujo said. Oramisi is with the National AIDS and STI’s Control Programme (Nascop), a state agency tasked with the country’s response to HIV and Aids. Oramisi told Africa Check that these were “our estimates and they are publicly available for your reference”. She added that the data was also in “recently released HIV estimates” from 2018.
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