UNAIDS warns ages 15-24 a vulnerable time for women

A new report by UNAIDS shows that countries are getting on the fast track in the HIV/AIDS fight , with an additional one million people accessing HIV treatment in just six months (January to June 2016).

By June 2016, around 18.2 million (16.1 million–19.0 million) people had access to the life-saving medicines, including 910,000 children, double the number five years earlier.

UNAIDS said if these efforts were sustained and increased, the world would be on track to achieve the target of 30 million people on treatment by 2020.

The report, “Get on the Fast-Track: the life-cycle approach to HIV”, was launched on Monday in Windhoek, Namibia by Namibian President Hage Geingob and UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé.

“Just under two years ago, 15 million people were accessing antiretroviral treatment – today more than 18 million are on treatment and new HIV infections among children continue to fall,” said President Geingob. “Now, we must ensure that the world stays on the fast-track to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 in Namibia, in Africa and across the world.”

The report contains detailed data on the complexities of HIV and reveals that girls’ transition into womanhood is a very dangerous time, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. “Young women are facing a triple threat,” Executive Director Sidibé said. “They are at high risk of HIV infection, have low rates of HIV testing, and have poor adherence to treatment. The world is failing young women and we urgently need to do more.” Executive Director

HIV prevention is key to ending the AIDS epidemic among young women and the cycle of HIV infection needs to be broken. Recent data from South Africa shows that young women are acquiring HIV from adult men, while men acquire HIV much later in life after they transition into adulthood and continue the cycle of new infections. The report also shows that the life-extending impact of treatment is working. In 2015, there were more people over the age of 50 living with HIV than ever before –5.8 million. The report highlights that if treatment targets are reached, that number is expected to soar to 8.5 million by 2020.

Older people living with HIV, however, have up to five times the risk of chronic disease and a comprehensive strategy is needed to respond to increasing long-term healthcare costs. The report also warns of the risk of drug resistance and the need to reduce the costs of second and third-line treatments. It also highlights the need for more synergies with tuberculosis (TB), human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer, and hepatitis C programmes in order to reduce the major causes of illness and death among people living with HIV.

Locally, the National AIDS Programme Secretariat, in its relaunching of its national days of testing for HIV/AIDS, said particular focus would be placed on youths and young adults.

National Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) Coordinator Debra Success-Hall explained that the Secretariat’s programmatic data has revealed that persons between the ages of 15 and 19 and 20 and 25 were being diagnosed on a daily basis with HIV. This, she noted, calls for urgent action to be taken.

“We need to ensure that we do something urgently to ensure that we are able to decrease that. We have our ‘in and out’ of school youths, and we have to probably go back to the drawing board and develop a new strategy to deal with these (young) people,” she stated.