Mwikani has been a community healthcare worker for the Eastern Deanery AIDS Relief Program<\/a> (EDARP) since 1993, when Maryknoll Father Edward Phillips asked Catholic churches in the eastern slums of Nairobi to recommend volunteers. Few came forward because of the fear and stigma associated with HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet when she heard the appeal in a meeting of her small Christian community, Mwikani says she jumped at the chance. \u201cI wanted to be Christ\u2019s hands and feet in my community,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In their meager homes constructed from scrap lumber and rusting metal sheets, Mwikani nursed her patients when they fell ill. At times she carried them on her back to the nearby EDARP clinic. She and other outreach workers were often seen as harbingers of death. Sometimes neighbors refused to answer when she knocked on their doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then came antiretroviral medications, a pharmaceutical reprieve that suppressed levels of the virus in the body and allowed countless HIV-positive people<\/a> to live relatively normal lives. Mwikani\u2019s role changed. She became a coach, making sure her patients stayed on their meds, while also assuring that their other needs in the slum were met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although her destitute patients had access to life-saving drugs, they often lacked sufficient food. As part of EDARP\u2019s commitment to the overall well-being of its patients, Mwikani provided nutritional assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also provided special care for pregnant women both before and after birth. By assuring that pregnant women stay on medication, EDARP<\/a> has prevented mother-to-child transmission of the virus in over 98 percent of births in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tuberculosis is endemic in Kenya and is the leading cause of death for people with HIV. As a result, EDARP integrated TB detection and treatment into its HIV programming, becoming an international model for treating the two diseases together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When no other funding source was available, the Maryknoll Society often stepped in to fund EDARP\u2019s services, such as a screening program for cervical cancer \u2014 which HIV-positive women are about six times more likely to develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Father Phillips says that EDARP has always been about more than simply providing clinical treatment<\/a> for disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFrom our inception, we\u2019ve been based in the slums where the poorest of the poor live,\u201d he says. \u201cFrom the beginning we offered a warm welcome to anyone seeking our help, as Jesus welcomed the lepers and blind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Stacy Adhiambo learned she was HIV positive at the age of 15, it felt like the end of the world. But Josephine Kamau, an EDARP community healthcare worker, convinced her not to give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI felt like killing myself when they told me I was HIV positive,\u201d says Adhiambo, now 26. \u201cBut thank God for Josephine. She told me how important the drugs were, the reasons for me to take them. Because of her, I am still alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n EDARP employs 46 HIV-positive peer mentors for additional support. Having themselves gone through diagnosis and treatment, they counsel newly diagnosed patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maureen Mauti is one of them. She says the main thing that peer mentors provide is hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople often feel hopeless when they learn their status, but when you tell them your story, they gain hope that they can survive,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the health of older adults living with HIV in the slums of Nairobi stabilized, EDARP\u2019s managing director, Alice Njoroge<\/a>, saw another need. The organization aims to reach younger people, who suffer higher rates of new infections and lower rates of compliance with antiretroviral therapy. Njoroge says EDARP recently began partnering with private pharmacies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot of adolescents will go to the pharmacies rather than come to the clinics. They go there, they buy their medication and that\u2019s it,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve worked with the pharmacies so they will refer them to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the 1.4 million people in Kenya living with HIV, 1.3 million are on antiretroviral therapy, and the availability of medications and services remains critically important. In partnership with international organizations and local groups such as EDARP, the Kenyan government was moving towards fully managing and funding the national HIV response by the year 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Njoroge says that EDARP was already working toward ways to sustain itself in the coming years. What it wasn\u2019t prepared for, she says, was the abrupt end to U.S. support<\/a> when President Donald Trump \u2014 on his first day in office \u2014 issued an emergency stop-work order for all U.S.-funded humanitarian work around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With thousands of lives at stake<\/a>, EDARP staff and volunteers weren\u2019t willing to stop their ministry. Although a memo went out immediately to all staff giving official notice of layoffs, about 95 percent of EDARP staff showed up for work the next day, despite knowing they wouldn\u2019t be paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n News of the stop-work order spread quickly, provoking panic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPatients were desperate, some of them were saying they\u2019re going to stop their medications,\u201d Njoroge says. \u201cAnd some patients who had just begun treatment were saying, \u2018Why should I continue this medication if you\u2019re not sure that it\u2019s going to be there?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI told them, \u2018We still have medications. Please continue taking your medicine,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cOur role was to reassure them, although we didn\u2019t know ourselves what was going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although some funding resumed after a few weeks, EDARP has struggled to keep delivering services. Last year, the organization\u2019s annual budget shrank from $3.7 million to $2.2 million. Vital funding continues to come from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, as well as other Church sources, pharmaceutical companies, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of approximately 400 EDARP staff at the beginning of 2025, only 191 were still employed at year\u2019s end. Eight of EDARP\u2019s 14 clinics \u2014 more than half \u2014 were forced to close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of EDARP\u2019s 1,537 community healthcare workers were receiving a stipend of $20 a month, but in October, those stipends ceased. Nonetheless, the volunteers continue serving their neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a calling,\u201d says Josephine Kamau, who with other community healthcare workers was formally commissioned for the role during a Mass in her parish. \u201cWe have a heart for serving our patients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Njoroge says EDARP\u2019s staff and volunteers will continue to dispense hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople follow closely what is going on in the U.S. So, whatever happens there, they come to us and ask how it impacts their lives and the medicines they take. We keep reassuring them that we won\u2019t abandon them<\/a>,\u201d Njoroge says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was there when they were dying, when we had nothing. I can\u2019t keep from worrying that we may have to witness the same thing again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Featured image: Florence Mwikani walks in the Mathare slum in Nairobi, where she serves as a community healthcare worker for AIDS patients. (Paul Jeffrey\/Kenya)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Alice](\"https:\/\/dev.maryknollsociety.org\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/04\/SP26-Aids-Relief-1.jpg\")
![\"Nurse](\"https:\/\/dev.maryknollsociety.org\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/04\/SP26-Aids-Relief-2.jpg\")
![\"Josephine](\"https:\/\/dev.maryknollsociety.org\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/04\/SP26-Aids-Relief-3.jpg\")