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About 75,000 school-going children infected with HIV and Aids do not have access to life-saving drugs, a head teachers' conference heard yesterday.
It also emerged that most of the infected children are experiencing stigma in schools.
A senior Ministry of Education official said the infected learners are suffering in silence and challenged head teachers to work together with parents to identify them.
"There are about 180,000 HIV-infected children and out of these, 45,000 are children below 14 years," said Margaret Mwirigi, senior assistant director of education.
She said of the children living with HIV and Aids, some 42 per cent of them are not accessing the anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).
Statistics indicate that some 260,000 adolescents in the country are living with HIV, against an estimated total population of 1.6 million people living with the condition.
And of these, only half the number is on ARVs, according to Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia.
Ms Mwirigi said the ministry had learnt that due to the associated stigma, some children sneak out of school to take the ARVs.
"They fear that when their mates know their HIV status they may be discriminated against, so they do things in secrecy, which is dangerous," she said.
A head teacher from Kilifi yesterday said he nearly punished a pupil who had sneaked out of school to take the drugs.
"The boy forgot to take the drug so he crept out during class time and when he came back he was spotted. The punishment then was that the parent of the child must bring one roll of barbed wire," said the teacher, adding that when the parent was summoned, the status of the child was revealed.
Mwirigi said parents and teachers had a key role to play and urged the various education stakeholders to support the directive by President Uhuru Kenyatta to give children ARVs.
"The ministry fears that if the children are not identified and put on drugs, the virus would be spread even more," she said, adding that some of the children were born with the virus.
Mwirigi, however, said the Government would not meet the set target of reducing the number of children not accessing ARVs if teachers and parents do not join the effort.
She said the ministry is already implementing the 2013 resolution made by 20 ministers of health and education from the Eastern and Southern Africa that spelt out long and short-term commitments.
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