World Aids Day | 8.5 million people in SA are HIV positive
During the presentation, Bekker discussed the breakthroughs in HIV treatment, care and prevention that have been accomplished so far, the role that community activism, service delivery and policy have played and what still needed to be achieved to reach the goal of an Aids-free generation. The country had been battling with the HIV/Aids epidemic for 40 years.Most of the children infected with HIV are from our subcontinent of Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the last 40 years, this virus has infected over 84 million people and left 40 million dead worldwide. In 2021, another 1.5 million new infections were recorded, and that summed up to almost 4 500 infections every day. This means that people are facing a lifelong and incurable disease. She said some reasons HIV/Aids had lasted so long were also that there was no cure, no vaccine and the country had been doped by Aids denialism, politics and ideology, funding constraints, stigma and discrimination.“We are not there yet. We still have almost 10 million people infected with Aids to find. It’s absolutely key that we leave no one behind. If we get people on treatment, we will get to see a reduction in transmission.
“Antiretroviral therapy initiation may be offered outside the health facility. The offer of same-day ART initiation should include approaches to improve uptake, treatment adherence and retention, such as tailored patient education, counselling and support.” We have come to realise that we will not end the epidemic alone. The focus needs to also be on primary prevention and reducing new infections, especially among the bulging youth population.
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