Abstract:
The advent of COVID-19 towards the end of the year 2019 led to radical
paradigm shifts in public health management strategies across the
world. This at a time when the HIV and AIDS pandemic has been in
existence for close to half a century and continues to ravage poor
populations of the Third World and developing nations. The World
Health organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March
2020. Since then, COVID-19 has been considered a social phenomenon
because of the complex nature of the virus’ infection, efforts to develop
treatment and the public’s responses to the disease and how it has
affected human interactions. Countries around the world responded
to this novel pandemic by instituting measures aimed at curbing the
spread of the virus. The Kenya Ministry of Health for example, gave
several directives aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 such as
setting up hand washing stations in all public places including homes,
banning public gatherings, and wearing protective face masks among
others. All attention was thus focused on the novel pandemic, and
HIV and AIDS which has been in existence for over four decades
seems to have been forgotten. It is against this background that this
paper revisits the public health management efforts on HIV and AIDS
prior to the advent of the COVID-19 virus as seen in one newspaper
advertisement in Kenya about HIV and AIDS.
