World made significant progress on HIV

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WINDHOEK – The world has made significant progress in meeting the 2015 HIV targets, but certain countries still have areas that need addressing in order to meet all the targets. Namibia, in particular, needs to scale-up voluntary male circumcision, because the coverage of male circumcision is currently below 10 percent. This is according to the just released 2013 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic. Further, the funding and mobilising of financial resources needs extra attention as AIDS expenditure remains short of the global target of between US$22 billion and US$24 billion in annual financial resources.

Besides the shortcomings the report highlights progress towards the 2015 HIV targets, notably a 52 percent reduction in new HIV infections among children and a combined 33 percent reduction among adults and children since 2001. The report also notes that “a growing number of countries are exploring innovative financing methods, including dedicated tax levies and AIDS trust funds,” in an effort to promote long-term sustainability of national responses. As a result of sustained progress, the world has the potential to reach at least 90 percent of pregnant women living with HIV with anti-retroviral interventions by 2015. Anti-retroviral coverage among pregnant women living with HIV reached 62 percent in 2012, and the number of children newly infected with HIV in 2012 was 35 percent lower than in 2009.

“However, achieving the global goal of reducing the number of children newly infected by 2015 will require similar scale-up of other prevention strategies, including primary HIV prevention for women and access to contraception and other family planning services.” The report says substantially greater efforts are needed to link pregnant women and children to HIV treatment and care. Pregnant women living with HIV are less likely than treatment-eligible adults overall to receive anti-retroviral therapy, and treatment coverage among children living with HIV in 2012 was less than half the coverage for adults.

The world is within reach of providing anti-retroviral therapy to 15 million people by 2015. In 2012, 9.7 million people in low- and middle-income countries received anti-retroviral therapy, representing 61 percent of all who were eligible under the 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) HIV treatment guidelines. However, under the 2013 WHO guidelines, the HIV treatment coverage in low- and middle-income countries represented only 34 percent of the 28.3 million people eligible in 2013.

As a result of sustained progress in meeting the needs of tuberculosis patients living with HIV, the world is within reach of achieving the 2015 target of reducing by 50 percent tuberculosis-related deaths among people living with HIV. “Since 2004, tuberculosis-related deaths among people living with HIV have declined by 36 percent worldwide and slightly less in Africa, home to 75 percent of all people living with tuberculosis and HIV. The WHO estimates that the scale-up of collaborative HIV/TB activities prevented 1.3 million people from dying from 2005 to 2012,” according to the report.

 

By Desie Heita