1 December 2025
By Maurine Oora, Field Officer, Lean on Me Foundation
In a peri-urban area of Kombedu in Kisumu County, where murram roads snake through dense informal settlements, lives a young woman named Dorothy. At just 19 years old, she bears burdens far greater than her age implies, yet she clings to a quiet resilience that has kept her children alive. Her twins are small, her resources limited, and she continuously juggles the daily challenge of feeding her children while carrying the weight of a life-changing diagnosis.
Dorothy is a young mother of lively twins, born on a grey, rainy morning that she still vividly remembers. It was during her first antenatal clinic (ANC) visit that she discovered her HIV status. The words hit her like a stone. She recalls the room spinning slightly, her hands trembling as she tried to understand what this meant for her future. She had walked to the Airport health centre filled with hope; she left with fear and confusion. There was no partner to support her, and she had no family she could confide in.
The early days were overwhelming. With no family support and struggling to make ends meet, Dorothy often went an entire day without a meal. She washes clothes for a living, yet the demands of caring for newborn twins pushed her to her limits. The lack of food meant that she had to start mixed feeding, which posed significant risks to her babies’ health.
When her twins turned one, a routine PCR test revealed that one of them was HIV positive. The news was devastating. Dorothy felt alone, frightened, and unsure of how to move forward. When the mentor mother explained that one of the twins was living with HIV, she felt her knees weaken. “I thought I had failed as a mother,” she whispered during one of our psychosocial sessions.
But the mentor mother told her something that revived her spirit: “With treatment and good adherence, your child can live a long, healthy life. You are not alone.”
During a routine follow-up and health talk at the health facility, Dorothy connected with the Lean on Me Foundation. That is how we met her: a shy, exhausted young woman holding two hungry toddlers, her eyes filled with a mixture of fear and hope. We provided her with psychosocial support and food parcels.
Through our psychosocial support groups, which we call the “Sister Circles,” she found a safe space to discuss stigma, motherhood, and the emotional burden she had endured alone. She connected with other young mothers whose stories reflected her own, and gradually, she began to let go of her shame. She gained knowledge about mental health, resilience, and parenting while living with HIV. It was in this space that her journey towards hope started.
Through consistent counselling, guidance, and emotional support, Dorothy gradually came to accept her child’s diagnosis.
Nevertheless, administering treatment remains difficult. On days when work is scarce, she has to ration food. When she feels emotionally overwhelmed, she finds it hard to stick to the medication schedule. However, she persists, driven by love and the realisation that paediatric HIV treatment can give her child a future she once thought was impossible.
In communities like those we serve, children living with HIV and their families face significant challenges: poverty, stigma, and limited access to nutritious food, which can hinder medication adherence. Many families still rely on multiple pills or bitter syrups, which often affect consistency in treatment. The introduction of paediatric ALD (abacavir/lamivudine/dolutegravir), a once-daily, dispersible pill recommended by the WHO and made accessible through organisations like the Medicines Patent Pool, has transformed how families manage paediatric HIV, enhancing adherence and reducing the burden on caregivers like Dorothy.
My name is Maurine Oora, and I serve as the field officer of Lean on Me Foundation, a Kenyan organisation dedicated to advancing young women’s health advocacy and reproductive, Maternal, child and adolescent health justice. For over two decades, I have worked at the intersection of HIV/AIDS programming, maternal health, and community advocacy in Kenya. My work is deeply informed by lived experience, as a woman living with HIV who navigated the PMTCT landscape when antiretroviral treatments were not yet available. I understand the fears, challenges, and hopes that mothers living with HIV carry.
At Lean on Me, my work involves ensuring that girls and young women, especially those living with HIV, receive the care, information, and support they need to thrive. My day-to-day activities include connecting vulnerable adolescents and young mothers to health services, coordinating psychosocial support programmes, and facilitating health talks that build confidence, agency, and bodily autonomy. Through these efforts, we witness tangible change: girls completing school, mothers confidently caring for their children, and families empowered to manage HIV with dignity.
Lean on Me plays a vital role in our communities because we fill critical gaps that the formal health system often cannot address alone. We provide the relationship-based, stigma-free support that enables women to stay engaged in care, adhere to treatment, and advocate for themselves and their children. We create safe spaces where women can share their stories, build solidarity, and find strength in community. We’ve seen mothers transform from fearful and isolated to empowered advocates who support other women in similar situations.
For Dorothy, Lean on Me provided more than resources; it offered a lifeline. Through our programs, she gained practical support, consistent counselling, and connection to health services, all of which helped her and her children survive and thrive.
Dorothy’s story emphasises the multifaceted challenges faced by young mothers living with HIV in Kenya. Beyond medical treatment, families require holistic support that tackles economic hardship, food insecurity, mental well-being, and social exclusion. Adherence to treatment isn’t isolated; it depends on stable housing, sufficient nutrition, and a caring community that combats stigma and offers practical assistance.
The availability of paediatric ALD signifies more than a medical breakthrough, it marks a shift in our beliefs about what children living with HIV deserve. A once-daily, child-friendly tablet recognises that children’s lives matter, that their treatment should be tailored to their needs, and that adherence should not be an impossible burden for families. For young mothers like Dorothy, who juggle caring for twins whilst facing poverty, this simplified treatment plan can be the difference between consistent adherence and treatment failure.
Stories like Dorothy’s highlight not only the importance of access to pediatric HIV treatments like pALD but also the critical role of community-led organisations in bridging gaps that women living with HIV often face in treatment, care, and support. On this World AIDS Day, we celebrate resilience, advocate for expanded access to life-saving therapies across Africa, and reaffirm our commitment to supporting girls and women living with HIV so that no one has to face this journey alone.
As we mark this significant day, Dorothy’s story reminds us that progress in the HIV response is measured not only by scientific breakthroughs but also by the daily experiences of families living with HIV. The efforts of organisations like the Medicines Patent Pool to broaden access to quality paediatric HIV treatments across Africa are transforming—and saving—children’s lives.
However, access to treatment is only one part of the solution. We must also continue investing in strengthening PMTCT programmes to prevent paediatric HIV from occurring, enhancing healthcare worker capacity to deliver stigma-free, family-centred care, supporting community organisations like Lean on Me that offer wraparound services to families, ensuring reliable and consistent supply chains for paediatric formulations, and amplifying the voices of women and children living with HIV in all decisions that impact them.
Dorothy continues her journey, taking it one day at a time. She still washes clothes to support her family. She still attends Sister Circles where she finds strength and solidarity. Each day, she gives her child the medication that helps them grow stronger and healthier. Her story is one of courage, resilience, and the transformative power of community support combined with access to innovative, child-friendly HIV treatments.
About Lean on Me Foundation:
Lean on Me Foundation is a Kenyan organisation dedicated to women’s health advocacy and justice in reproductive, maternal, child, and adolescent health. Through comprehensive programmes including psychosocial support groups, known as “Sister Circles,” health education, and connections to care, Lean on Me empowers girls and young women living with HIV to access the services, information, and community support they need to thrive.
Contact:
Maurine Oora, Field Officer, Lean on Me Foundation.
Press and Media
The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) is a United Nations-backed public health organisation working to increase access to and facilitate the development of life-saving medicines for low- and middle-income countries. Through its innovative business model, MPP partners with civil society, governments, international organisations, industry, patient groups, and other stakeholders to prioritise and license needed medicines and pool intellectual property to encourage generic manufacture and the development of new formulations.
To date, MPP has signed agreements with 22 patent holders for 13 HIV antiretrovirals, one HIV technology platform, three hepatitis C direct-acting antivirals, a tuberculosis treatment, a cancer treatment, four long-acting technologies, a post-partum haemorrhage medicine, three oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19 and 16 COVID-19 technologies.
MPP was founded by Unitaid, which continues to be MPP’s main funder. MPP’s work on access to essential medicines is also funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Government of Canada, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Government of Flanders. MPP’s activities in COVID-19 are undertaken with the financial support of the Japanese Government, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the German Agency for International Cooperation, and SDC.