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A “critical lack” of human resources, insufficient infrastructure and difficult access to health care are some of the main problems in the fight against HIV/Aids in Mozambique, the director of the National Council for the Fight against Aid (CNCS) has said.
Speaking in Coimbra, Portugal, as part of a panel on combating the HIV, Francisco Mbofana, pointed to the lack of infrastructure, of human resources and difficulty of access as some of the “big challenges” facing the country’s fight against the epidemic.
Mbofana said it was necessary to train more people to treat HIV, but said that,
“despite the challenges, there is progress,” and that the number of people being treated had increased since 2011.
In 2017, 317,000 adults started antiretroviral treatment, he told a session of the regional meeting of the World Health Summit being held in Coimbra’s São Francisco Convent.
Mbofana estimates that there are 2.1 million infected people in Mozambique, and said it was necessary to ensure that health care and HIV testing “reaches those at high risk”.
The country carried out a total of seven million tests in 2017, he said, but only 300,000 patients were found with the virus.
The country, he thought, was not being efficient with testing, and it was also necessary to guarantee a “financially sustainable” response to the work done in this area.
“A lot of money comes to the country [for this area], but we need to use it more efficiently,” he said.
The regional meeting of the World Health Summit, which began yesterday, brings together more than 700 experts in an event where the central theme is the global health of African countries.
The Coimbra meeting comprises presentations by about 120 speakers from more than 40 countries, distributed through more than 20 work sessions and four plenary sessions, which will cover topics such as infant mortality, health care after armed conflicts, infectious diseases , climate change, digital medicine, reversal of malaria spread, migration and health and access to vaccines.
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