After over four decades into the Human Immunodeficiency Virus
(HIV) epidemic, four in five children living with HIV in West and Central
Africa are still not receiving life-saving antiretroviral therapy, NaijaAgroNet reports.
This is coming as AIDS-related deaths among adolescents aged 15-19
are on the rise, according to a new report released Tuesday by the United
Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).
NaijaAgroNet also reports that while acknowledging progress in
several areas, the report Step Up the Pace: Towards an AIDS-free
generation in West and Central Africa, jointly published by UNICEF and
UNAIDS, shows that West and Central Africa is lagging behind on nearly every
measure of HIV prevention, treatment and care programmes for children and
adolescents. In 2016, an estimated 60,000 children were newly infected with HIV
in West and Central Africa.
Disclosing this to NaijaAgroNet, UNICEF’s West and Central Africa
Regional Director, Marie-Pierre Poirier, described as tragic that so many
children and adolescents today are not receiving the treatment they need just
because they have not been tested.
“We need to make better use of innovations to increase early
diagnosis and improve access to HIV treatment and care for children. For
example, the point-of-care technology diagnostic brings testing closer to where
children attend health services and self-testing can be a good option for
adolescents who may be more comfortable with it,” Poirier said.
The region’s coverage of life-saving antiretroviral therapy among
children living with HIV, Poirier said, is the lowest in the world because many
countries have limited capacity to perform the tests needed for early infant
diagnosis of HIV. Without knowing a child’s HIV status, his or her family is
less likely to seek the treatment that could prevent the tragedy of a child’s
death from AIDS-related illnesses.
The situation is worse among adolescents. The annual number of new
HIV infections among those aged 15–19 years in the region now exceeds that of
children aged 0-14 years. These new infections occur mostly through unprotected
sexual contact and among adolescent girls. Equally concerning, according to the
report, is that West and Central Africa has recorded a 35 per cent increase in
the annual number of AIDS-related deaths among adolescents aged 15-19 years —
the only age group in which the number of AIDS-related deaths increased between
2010 and 2016.
With the region’s youth population expected to grow significantly
within the coming decades, especially in countries like the Democratic Republic
of the Congo and Nigeria, the numbers of children and adolescents becoming
infected with HIV and dying from AIDS is likely to remain high, unless the HIV
response – both prevention and treatment – improves dramatically.
The report highlights that the 24 countries that make up the West
and Central Africa region are home to 25 per cent of children aged 0–14 years
living with HIV worldwide.
“Leaders of the region have endorsed a Catch-Up plan aiming to
triple the number of people on treatment in the region – including children –
by the end of 2018, the key issue now is to accelerate implementation,” said
Luiz Loures, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director.
“Countries should urgently put
in place more effective strategies for early infant diagnosis of HIV, and start
reducing inequity in children’s access to treatment.”
The report proposes key strategies that will enable countries to
accelerate progress in curbing the spread of disease. These include:
1. A differentiated HIV response focusing on
unique epidemiological and local contexts in each country and community.
2. The integration of HIV services into key
social services including health, education and protection.
3. Community ownership and local governance of
the HIV response including working with families, better placed to help reduce
stigma, access prevention and treatment.
4. Investment in innovations to remove barriers
to scale-up including new diagnostic and biomedical approaches such as point of
care diagnostics, HIV self-testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis.
UNICEF announced last
week that at the current pace of progress, the global 2020 Super-Fast-Track targets
to end AIDS among children will not be achieved.
Isaac Oyimah/GEE