African leaders have been called upon to scale up if new HIV infections are to be prevented.
Speaking at the opening press conference of the 16th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA 2011) in the Ras Hotel on Saturday (Dec 2nd, 2011) the UNAIDS Director General from Senegal, Dr Meskerem Bekele, said global progress in both preventing and treating HIV emphasizes the benefits of sustaining investment in HIV/AIDS over the longer term.
Under ICASA’s theme Own, scale up and sustain, Dr Bekele said that: “It has taken the world ten years to achieve this level of momentum. There is now a very real possibility of getting ahead of the epidemic. But this can only be achieved by both sustaining and accelerating this momentum over the next decade and beyond.”
Dr Bekele emphasised that the current HIV status progress in Africa has been made possible because of political will of African leaders. However, she called on governments to allocate funds for HIV prevention so that they can reduce donor dependency, which is reducing due to the global economic downturn.
She said the global HIV/AIDS response has increased access to HIV services resulting in a 15 percent reduction of new infections over the past decade and a 22 percent decline in AIDS-related deaths in the last five years. It has also been reported that HIV new infections in Africa has reduced to 26 percent from 1997, which Dr Bekele attributed to access to ARV.
The Ethiopian PEPFAR country director, Dr Carmilla Green-Abale, said the world is now focusing on elimination of HIV infection in children in order to have a free HIV generation. She said access to HIV testing services has enabled 61 percent of pregnant women in eastern and southern Africa to receive testing and counseling for HIV up from 14 percent in 2005.
Dr Green-Abale acknowledged that investment in HIV services could lead to total gains of up to US$34 billion by 2020 in increased economic activity and productivity, more than offsetting the costs of ART programmes.“By investing wisely, countries can increase efficiencies, reduce costs and improve on results. However, gains made to date are being threatened by a decline in resources for AIDS,” she added.
Worldwide, the vast majority 64 percent of people aged 15-24 living with HIV today are female. The rate is even higher in sub-Saharan Africa where girls and young women make up 71% of all young people living with HIV - essentially because prevention strategies are not reaching them.
Leila Pakkala, the Director of the UNICEF Office in Geneva, said that although better services to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV have averted some 350 000 new infections among children, some 3.4 million children are living with HIV, many of whom lack HIV treatment. She said that only one in four children in need of HIV treatment in low- and middle-income countries received it in 2010, as compared to 1 in 2 adults.“While there have been gains in treatment, care and support available to adults, we note that progress for children is slower. The coverage of HIV interventions for children remains alarmingly low. Through concerted action and equity-focused strategies, we must make sure that global efforts are working for children as well as adults,” Pakkala said.
The ICASA President 2011 Yigarema Abebe said that the conference is a critical platform for sharing progress and gaps in the HIV response. Abebe said that the progress made in the fight against HIV/AIDS must be sustained despite the challenge of global financial crisis, adding that Global Fund Round 11 was postponed and this has impact on people living with HIV. He also said that there is a huge need to access universal treatment in order to scale up and sustain preventing new infections.
Antiretroviral therapy does not only improve the health and well-being of the infected people but also stops further HIV transmission, and is available now for 6.65 million people in low- and middle-income countries, accounting for 47 percent of the 14.2 million people eligible to receive it .
As the 16th International AIDS and STIs Conference opens in Addis Ababa, participants are excited about the reported successes in HIV prevention and treatment, but are extremely concerned about the challenges with funding. African governments need to take their political will to the level of owning, scaling up and sustaining the momentum created in the African HIV response to date.
