Mozambique: Cholera causes at least 150 deaths in two months
Lusa (File photo)
Mozambique has the eighth highest prevalence of AIDS in the world, with about 1.5 million people infected and 40,000 deaths annually, and is racing against time to meet its goal of eradicating the epidemic by 2030.
Although official data shows progress in combating AIDS, international organisations warn of the demographic risks and the vulnerability of young people, especially women, to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections.
According to UN-AIDS data, the number of new infections among adults decreased by 40 percent between 2004 and 2014, and treatment coverage for pregnant women with HIV allowed a 73 percent reduction in new infections in children.
But the country continues to record more than 100 deaths per day and 1.5 million people infected, more than half of whom are women and over 100,000 children.
In women between the ages of 15 and 25, the prevalence is even more acute and three times higher than in men, according to government data. The government is trying to extend clinical coverage and access to antiretrovirals, but one third of patients drop out of treatment in the first year.
The Fourth National Strategic Plan for HIV/Aids 2015-2019, with a budget estimated at US$500 million, foresees the reduction of the mortality rate by 40 percent, an increase in the number of antiretroviral beneficiaries to 80 percent and a reduction in the abandonment of treatment after three years.
But earlier this year the National AIDS Council warned that the goal of eradicating the disease by 2030 could be jeopardised by lack of funding as the country plunges into a deep economic crisis and faced a significant reduction in foreign aid.
In December 2015, Maputo hosted the leaders of three major international anti-epidemic organisations, the first time they visited a country together, who alerted the government to the need for urgent action to reduce new infections and prevent the spread of the epidemic.
“We believe there is absolute urgency,” Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the US Government’s HIV/Aids activities, told Lusa at the end of a two-day visit to Mozambique with UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé, and Mark Dybul of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
According to Birx, despite progress, Mozambique is on a trajectory for “historical new HIV infections highs” associated with a large increase in tuberculosis cases if control measures are not accelerated and, according to her, demography is part of the explanation.
In Mozambique, as in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of young people has increased between 30 percent and 40 percent, putting this age range at risk of new infections, especially women, which means that if a baby saved at birth later contracts the virus at 16 because nothing has been done, “it is absolutely tragic.”
Even if the rate of new infections is reduced, “if there is 40 percent more risk, then nothing has been accomplished,” Birx says, describing a real risk of an “uncontrolled” [situation], an expression also used by Dybul.
Birx says that projections up to 2028 indicate a clear divergence between estimates of a sharp decline in new HIV infections and deaths in Mozambique, if there are new and urgent measures, and the calculations of a continuous rise during the same period, “if something different is not done”.
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