Africa ‘not on track to reach 2030 HIV/AIDS targets’

[NAIROBI] The likelihood of African countries reachingHIVtesting and condom use targets by 2030 is only 12.1 per cent and 28.5 per cent respectively, making the need for more testing and treatment a priority, a modellingstudysuggests.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) launched ambitious targets in 2014 to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 by achieving 95 per cent diagnosis and 95 per cent of people with HIV taking medications against the18beplay下载 .

The study estimated the likelihood of 38 African countries meeting the targets using population-based method conducted from 2003 to 2018 involving 1,456,224 sexually active adults of ages 15-49 years old.

“Although many countries have upward trends in HIV testing and condom use, the annual rate of increase is too slow, and the probabilities of reaching UNAIDS targets were very low,” says Stuart Gilmour, the study’s co-author and a professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at St. Luke’s International University, Japan.

“Although many countries have upward trends in HIV testing and condom use, the annual rate of increase is too slow.”

Stuart Gilmour, St. Luke’s International University

In 2019, there were 690,000 AIDS-related deaths and 1.7 million new infections, with young women and adolescent girls accounting for about 25 per cent of new infections in Sub-Saharan Africa despite making up about ten per cent of the population, according to联合国.

The study, which was presented at the 2021 HIV Research for Prevention Conference late last month, identified seven countries with downward trends in annual HIV testing: Benin, the Congo-Brazzaville, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar and Sierra Leone, with Chad, Madagascar, Niger and South Sudan found to have downward trends in condom use.

But the study shows high annual HIV testing in 2030 in countries such as Eswatini (92.6 per cent), Lesotho (90.5 per cent) and Uganda (90.5 per cent). For condom use, the top three countries are Eswatini (85 per cent), Lesotho (75.6 per cent) and Namibia (75.5 per cent).

While significant progress has been made in the past decades towards the testing coverage target, this study found only a very low chance for African countries to achieve the first UNAIDS targets by 2030.

“This is important for African countries and citizens of those countries to understand, since HIV is a majorhealthconcern in Africa and it appears from our results that more needs to be done to control it,” Gilmour tellsSciDev.Net.“HIV cannot be eliminated without very high coverage of testing and low levels of behavioural risk so understanding what the trends in these behaviours are is important to know whether African countries are on track to control or eliminate HIV.”

African countries need to decide how best to use their resources to fight HIV, but from an international perspective the withdrawal of overseas aid and development assistance for health targeting HIV/AIDS needs to be reconsidered, Gilmour explains.

他补充说：“在过去的十年中，人们对艾滋病毒/艾滋病的关注已减少……但是，如果我们想确保将来消除艾滋病毒，将需要新的努力。”

Linda-Gail Becker, a professor of infectious diseases at South Africa’s University of Cape Town, says that the findings indicate a bigger problem that has stalled in collective response to HIV.

“测试和避孕套是艾滋病毒反应的基础。如果我们不符合这两个基本方面的目标，那么在许多其他问题等其他问题上确实非常关心。”SciDev.Net.

Each country needs to review its own HIV situation and decide on a tailored response that impacts on new infections as well as reductions in cases and death, according to Becker.

“We still have much to do in Africa on AIDS and whilst COVID-19 has hit us all hard, we cannot afford to drop the ball on an epidemic which previously brought us to our knees,” she says.

*Correction

*An earlier version of this article indicated that根据新闻来源，刚果民主共和国（DRC）是在年度艾滋病毒测试中下降趋势的七个国家之一。此后，新闻来源澄清说，尽管这项研究涵盖了刚果民主共和国和刚果布拉查韦尔，但在刚果 - 布拉查韦尔（Congo-Brazzaville）观察到了艾滋病毒测试的下降趋势。This was corrected on22/02/2021.

这件作品由Scidev.net的撒哈拉以南非洲英语桌子制作。