A petitioner has filed a case at the Milimani law court seeking to suspend a decision by the Ministry of Health to conduct a national HIV testing algorithm review.
Josephat Omwando says the process intends to introduce inferior third-generation tests.
Omwando has faulted the ministry, Director of Medical Services Leonard Kigwara for failing to conduct sensitisation on collection of blood samples, the purpose and the expected outcome of the clinical study.
The World Health Organization had recommended to its member states to introduce a third kit into their national HIV testing algorithms.
It is on this recommendation that Kenya started doing tests for the purposes of modification of the testing algorithm, with the intention of introducing a third kit.
However, Omwando claims that the collection of samples by the task force was inadequate as they were collected from only three health facilities in Nairobi county.
"They failed to take into account that the products to be approved after the national HIV algorithm review should capture results in the whole country and not Nairobi alone," Omwando said.
Omwando argues the process lacked public participation, involvement of key stakeholders and sensitisation in the collection of samples was not conducted.
He has termed the whole review unconstitutional.
He wants the court to suspend the decision of the ministry to conduct a national HIV algorithm review pending the case he has filed.
"The whole review process is fraudulent because members of the task force are not objective in ensuring it benefits the people but they are doing it for personal gain," he said.
He also argues that the appointment of Kigwara flawed the whole process.
Court documents show Kigwara led the review team in performing clinical trials for one of the duo kits (an advanced HIV screening test) and presented a report that showed that it performed poorly in comparison to the results declared by the manufacturer and WHO.
Omwando says Kigwara's participation in the review team discredited the whole report as he is not a qualified medical lab technician.
The national HIV testing is currently being conducted using a kit known as Determine HIV as the first-line screening kit.
(Edited by Tabnacha O)
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