The HIV/aids epidemic was another part of this tragic tale. When press reports of aids cases in Kenya first began to appear in the mid-1980s, some government officials and politicians denounced them as alarmist and racist. Voicing criticisms quite similar to those rose against family planning programs during the 1960s and 1970s, they argued that journalists were exaggerating the prevalence of aids and playing to deep-rooted Western stereotypes of Africa as a place of disease and promiscuity. Theories that located the origins of HIV in Africa only heightened official defensiveness. Pressing financial constraints also shaped the government's response. Some officials worried that too much attention to HIV/aids would hurt tourism. As the single largest earner of foreign currency in the Kenyan economy, tourism was crucial to the government's repayment of international loans and the purchasing of expensive imports, particularly oil. Any thoughts of staging aggressive HIV/aids awareness and prevention campaigns also quickly confronted the reality that Kenya's healthcare system was already overburdened. Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, the onset of the aids epidemic coincided with the implementation of structural adjustment policies aimed at liberalizing economies by, among other things, reducing government spending on social services, including healthcare. Faced with shrinking health budgets and mounting foreign debts, countries like Kenya had few internal resources to devote to combating HIV/aids. Moreover, few international and African leaders possessed the political will to raise the resources necessary to combat the epidemic in Africa.
Kenya is estimated to have the ninth-highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the world; about 14 percent of the adult population is infected with the virus (World Almanac, 2002). Currently, 2 million adults and 100,000 children under 15 years are living with AIDS in Kenya. About one million children have been orphaned as a result of HIV / AIDS, and the number is rising (UNAIDS, 2002a).....................
