Stanley Ngara’s dream is to travel throughout Africa and beyond to distribute millions of condoms and also create awareness to billions about the importance of protected sex by using male and female condoms.
Mr. Ngara, who works in community mobilisation with Liverpool VCT, says: “I believe that as Africans we are the people that can come up with a solution to HIV. In Liverpool VCT, my role is to promote awareness about the different range of services and the uptake of those services. Whereas ours is an integrated package, sometimes in an outreach style, and my role is to attract clients to our facilities and also distribute condoms. We use the 4Es – enforce, educate, empower and engage – in condoms matters.”
According to Stanley, Liverpool VCT has a range of services such as home based care and testing, integrated and stand alone SRH and HIV services, outreach, outpatient and inpatient facilities. Its head office is in Nairobi and it also operates in Nyanza, Kisumu, Eastern Machakos, Kitui and the coastal areas of Mombasa.
One thing Stanley is proud of is his talent of working with acrobats to attract different categories of people from the streets of Kenya. He later uses the opportunity of the people gathered to deliver messages on HIV counselling and testing.
“I reach the most at risk populations like MSM, truck drivers, sex workers and injecting drug users. This is because I first develop the strategies for reaching them; I pick the messages for all these people differently and deliver it in the way the is appropriate to the category of people.”
“For instance when you want to reach MSM, it is important to realise that it is a network where you may need to be friendly. Sometimes you may need one of them to introduce you to the others. You need to love them, attend their parties and adapt to some behaviour you are not used to. Nobody likes their reputation to be damaged…But the challenge here is that you may have to weigh your own personal values, other people’ values and what is expected of you professionally and then do the right thing.”
According to Nancy Wangondu, a nurse with Liverpool VCT, who carries of cervical cancer screening: “In our integrated services, we may come across two or three cancer positive cases in one day. We then refer them to Kenyata National Referral Hospital. But we also make sure that we follow them up to ensure that they have taken the services.”
One other important thing that Liverpool VCT does is the identification of the various SRH and HIV risks faced by their different clients. These include the risks to alcohol, sexual lifestyle, interventions for protection like voluntary medical male circumcision, TB, contraception and gender based violence.
Sex models used by Liverpool VCT
Nancy, ready to screen cervical cancer
