On the black continent, the World Health Organization (WHO) maintains, HIV is still expected to be a “threat to public health” by 2030.
Over the past decade, AIDS has lost ground in Africa. In a statement received by APA on Tuesday, the WHO said that “considerable progress” has been made in the fight against HIV.
Over the period under review, new infections have fallen by 43 percent and related deaths have almost halved. However, WHO said that “many countries have fallen behind on key interim elimination targets and challenges related to Covid-19 have exacerbated the situation.”
To reach the 2030 target, the UN agency said that within four years, in African countries “95 percent of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 95 percent of people who know their HIV status are on treatment, and 95 percent of people on treatment are suppressing their viral load.”
On Tuesday, at the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa in Durban, South Africa, a “scorecard” to measure these three targets was released.
To date, the WHO reported, Africa certifies that “87 percent of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 77 percent are on treatment and 68 percent now have a low viral load.”
Botswana, Cabo Verde, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, at the current rate of progress, are “the only countries” capable of achieving the 95-95-95 targets by 2025, according to the UN agency’s analysis.
Top of the class, Eswatini “has surpassed the first two (goals) and is on track to meet the third.” In this southern African country, “the viral load of 93 percent of people on treatment is already suppressed,” the WHO rejoiced.
Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said: “COVID-19 has made the fight against HIV even more difficult, but one virus should not take precedence over another. We must fight the coronavirus and HIV simultaneously.”
In 2020, the number of people living with AIDS worldwide is estimated by WHO to be 37.7 million, including 1.5 million new infections. In that year, HIV caused 680,000 deaths.
ID/lb/abj/APA