PLHIV in Free State continue to face challenges(file)
In the fight against HIV, ignoring societal enablers could see new HIV infections and death estimates reach over four million by 2030. This is according to UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Eamonn Murphy.
“We need societal enablers to reach impact goals. Failure to make any progress would undermine efforts to reach the HIV service targets resulting in an additional 1.7 million AIDS-related deaths and 2.5 million additional new HIV infections between 2021 and 2030,” stated Murphy.
He was speaking at the 24th International Aids conference in Montreal on Sunday.
The role of societal enablers
He said the globe would not reach epidemic transition without focusing on societal enablers and community engagement. “We will not reach epidemic transition without focusing on societal enablers and community engagement 30-80-60”, he stated.
Murphy said it is concerning that the decline in the number of new HIV infections has stagnated.
“Governments, last year, committed to 25 targets within the political declaration. Two of the targets were prevention and treatment. Gender equity, human rights, community leadership, integration, and investments were also targeted. But the decline in new HIV infections has stagnated,” said Murphy.
Dr Eamonn Murphy, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director, highlighted the importance of societal enablers in the fight against HIV during the International Aids conference in Montreal on Sunday. (Photo: Eamonn Murphy – Twitter)
He added: “We are all familiar with the epidemic and the targets, reduction of new infections and AIDS-related deaths, and we are missing these targets. The challenge for us is how do we get back on track? This year’s report highlights the danger of the risk we are facing. We had success, but gaps in the response prevent us from reaching the levels we want to reach.”
Murphy said the disparity between the number of children in treatment compared to adults is concerning.
“We will miss the 2025 target unless we accelerate treatment coverage, re-invigorate effective prevention efforts, and remove all barriers to inclusion. No region has achieved the 95-95-95 targets or the 90-90-90. Children remain far behind adults with 52% of children living with HIV on treatment compared to 76% among adults,” he said.
SA’s huge brunt
Professor Refilwe Phaswana-Mafuya, of the faculty of Health sciences at the University of Johannesburg, said that South Africa continues to record the highest share of the HIV/Aids epidemic worldwide.
“Although HIV prevalence plateaued at 13%, five during the last five years, SA still has the largest HIV epidemic in the world. Almost 20% of people living with HIV(PLHIV) worldwide are in SA. And the South African epidemic is heterogenous as it differs by socio-demographics such as race, gender, age, and geographic location,” stated Mafuya.
According to Mafuya, the highest prevalence is among Black Africans (17%) and the least among whites and Asians (1%). In terms of age, there is a higher prevalence in younger age groups (15-49%), with higher proportions among females (15-24 years). This is almost three times more than their male counterparts. There is also a higher prevalence in key populations, for example, gay and other men who have sex with men (29,7%) and female sex workers (59,2%).
The gap between goals and achievements
Mafuya said South Africa has to overcome several hurdles to end the epidemic by 2030.
“Clearly, South Africa has ambition and focus. However, the gap between achievements to date and the goal of ending HIV remains too wide. SA needs to use its accumulated implementation experience, political will, human rights advances and follow the science towards epidemic control by 2030,” she said.
— IAC – the International AIDS Conference (@AIDS_conference) July 31, 2022
Stigma and discrimination
According to Murphy, stigma and discrimination remain some of the hurdles in the fight against HIV.
“Stigma and discrimination still block the way forward. In nine of 21 countries, more than half of the people living with HIV surveyed reported feeling ashamed. Although we see increased action on stigma and discrimination, more needs to be done,” he said.
He added, “Countries must also take action to meet broader human rights obligations and reduce the underlying inequalities and intersecting forms of discrimination that hold back progress. They also need to support and effectively resource community-led responses. New policies and models are needed for the scale-up of integrated community-led responses. More consistent and easily accessible funding and capacity-building support should also be made available to enable women and young people in their diversity to assume leadership roles.” – Health-e News
Ndivhuwo Mukwevho is citizen journalist who is based in the Vhembe District of Limpopo province. He joined OurHealth in 2015 and his interests lie in investigative journalism and reporting the untold stories of disadvantaged rural communities. Ndivhuwo holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Media Studies from the University of Venda and he is currently a registered student with UNISA.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
While there are key populations who are at a higher risk of acquiring HIV, experts say they are not the only targets, and anyone is eligible to receive LEN.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
