Government needs to do more to reduce HIV infection among youths, Amakobe Sande, the country director of the United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids), has said.
Sande said, during her visit to Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation (Baylor-Uganda) at Mulago hospital on January 17, that HIV infection among youths between 15 and 24 years of age is on the rise.
According to Sande, available statistics on HIV infection are alarming and called for urgent intervention. She urged policy-makers to work on strategies to curb the rising numbers.
Sande noted that of the 83,000 new HIV cases recorded in 2015, 30,000 of those are boys and girls aged between 15 and 24. And 66 per cent of the infected adolescents were girls, she said.
“If our young people are now being ravaged by HIV/Aids and new infections, then we need to re-examine our programmes to ensure we are turning off the tap of new infections for what we are calling our future generation,” Sande said.
“We will not be able to achieve an HIV-free generation with the kind of statistics we are seeing among young people,” she added.
Sande noted that although government has succeeded in eliminating mother-to-child transmission, it was now time to consider protecting those HIV-negative babies who have grown into adolescents.
The UNAids country director commended Baylor-Uganda for its research and effort in making sure HIV patients get the best medical care to better their lives. Having started with 100 babies in 2003, Baylor-Uganda has now grown into an institute, which offers care and treatment to over 7,431 children, youth and adults.
The state-of- the-art facility at Mulago has helped improve HIV treatment and research in the country through partnering Texas Children’s hospital, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation and the Baylor College of Medicine. Also, in conjunction with the Health ministry and the Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC), Baylor-Uganda has extended its services to over 150 facilities in the country across 36 districts.
Prof. Adeodata Kekitiinwa, the Baylor-Uganda executive director, noted that despite financial hardships, they have managed to offer top-class health care to HIV patients.
She said Baylor’s other challenge was handling cervical cancer among older HIV-positive women. She said cervical cancer among HIV-positive women would be less if the vaccine had been got earlier.
“We only got the vaccine for cancer only recently. It meant that those women who are sexually-active and HIV-positive are at a higher risk of getting it since they were not immunised,” said Kekitiinwa.
According to UNAids, Uganda’s new infections as of June 2016 stood at 83,000, down from 100,000 in 2015. Currently 900,000 Ugandans are receiving HIV treatment.
UNAids is currently advocating the 90-90-90 target. That means that by 2020, 90 per cent of people living with HIV will know their status, 90 per cent will receive antiretroviral treatment and all of them will have a 90 per cent viral suppression.
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