171,510 of Nairobi residents are living with HIV, a report has said.
Revealing this at the launch of the Nairobi County’s HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan, county health executive Bernard Muia said that 8,653 of these were aged below 15 years.
According to Muia, the county also registered the highest number of commercial sex workers and gays.
“In Nairobi, we have 29,000 commercial sex workers, 11,000 men having sex with men and 7,000 injecting drugs, [and] all risk being infected by HIV,” he said.
He added that in the last decade however, a consistent decrease in HIV prevalence rates has decreased from 14 per cent to 8 per cent.
This could however mean little as the number of new infections in Nairobi remains at a high of 3,200 per year.
Muiya said that the key ways of transmission were sex between heterosexual partners, casual sex between gay males as well as sex workers and clients.