MOMBASA, Kenya, April 6, 2006 (AFP) - Grammy-award winning pop star Alicia Keys on Thursday visited a health project she, alongside other celebrities, co-funds in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa.
The 26-year-old Keys and other American celebrities support the Brooklyn-based charity, Keep a Child Alive, which provides medicine to parents and their children struggling with AIDS in Africa.
She was surrounded by excited mobs, as Kenyan police and Key's security detail barred journalists from speaking to her.
An AFP correspondent saw scores of fans struggling to see the star, who arrived in Kenyan on Wednesday, as she toured a children clinic in Coast Provincial Hospital.
"Alicia learnt about the blight of children in Kenyan from a medical doctor who used to work here. The doctor is currently furthering his studies in the United States," Anderson Kaindi, the clinic's head, told reporters.
Since 2004, Keep a Child Alive has been shipping drugs to the facility in Mombasa, where some 4,000 children get free anti-retrovirals.
From Kenya, Keys is expected to travel to Uganda on April 9 for a four-day trip to support the war against HIV/AIDS and give a ray of hope to families and children devastated by the scourge in the country, which is touted as Africa's success story for slashing the number of new HIV infections.
Of the 39.4 million people in the world living with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), nearly two-thirds -- 25.4 million -- live south of the Sahara, the poorest region in the world.
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