World Aids Day: Reflecting on progress made in Aids fight
METRO – Do you know your status? The world is yet again commemorating World Aids Day.
The world is yet again commemorating World Aids Day on 1 December.
South African National Aids Council (Sanac) has published their first report on progress in the fight against HIV.
The report highlights that there are still many infected people who still need to be treated in the next few years.
There are now 6.4 million people living with HIV in the country, and 2.5 million South Africans on antiretroviral treatment, according to the report.
A quarter of new HIV infections in South Africa occur in females between the ages of 15 and 24.
CEO for South African’s National Aids Council Fareed Abdullar said in a statement that HIV mainly targets the most vulnerable members of the population.
A lack of education, low self-esteem, weak social networks, unemployment, poverty, fear, violence, gender inequality and substance abuse merge in a downward spiral of high exposure to HIV, said Abdullar.
“We now have the option of using antiretroviral drugs for prevention and this can be administered to HIV-negative individuals whose partners might be positive. We also now know that an HIV-infected individual on antiretrovirals is 99 per cent less likely to infect a partner.”
He also suggested that government needs to increase essential health services or consider private sector and NGO options for delivering services linked to the further expansion of the antiretroviral treatment programme.
“Our biggest concern is that there are still too many new infections in South Africa each year (the number of new HIV infections in one year declined marginally in the sexually active population from 1.79 per cent in 2008 to 1.47 per cent in 2012),” he said.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi warns that prevention and sustaining the country’s antiretroviral programme are the biggest challenges in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the country. “The challenge is that the antiretroviral programme we are running is the biggest in the world and so it has got its own problems of being used,” said Motsoaledi.
