Aids-related deaths in South Africa: I 854 629 at noon on Wednesday July 26
Healthcare workers Initiative: Weak healthcare systems and a shortage of healthcare workers are undermining efforts to deliver anti-retroviral drugs to Africa, Kevin de Cock, director of the HIV/Aids Department at the World Health Organisation (WHO), said last week.
Africa has a shortage of one million healthcare workers, and health care infrastructures on the continent over the past 20 to 25 years have collapsed. In addition, Africa has ‘labs that don’t work, supply chains that don’t exist and diagnostics that are missing,” De Cock said, adding that ‘it is obvious that the elephant in the room is not the price of drugs”.
According to De Cock, some of the most important challenges are sustaining the commitment to provide access to anti-retrovirals and generating political dedication to strengthen healthcare systems.
The WHO in the coming years will focus on broadening HIV testing and counselling; enhancing prevention efforts; boosting access to treatment; strengthening healthcare systems; and increasing funding for surveillance, monitoring and research.
The WHO plans to launch a new healthcare workers’ initiative next month at the XVI International Aids Conference in Toronto. The programme, called ‘Treat, Train and Retain”, will seek to tackle the problems of retaining healthcare workers in Africa.
Source: Kaisernetwork.org
Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 1 841 347 at noon on Wednesday July 12
More anti-retrovirals for Mozambique: Last Friday the United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, Stephen Lewis, called for a rapid increase in the provision of anti-retroviral drugs for HIV-positive people in Mozambique to avoid a ‘grave crisis” in the country.
Speaking at the end of a week-long trip to the country, Lewis said the government ‘must move heaven and earth” to reach its target of 55 000 HIV-positive people receiving anti-retrovirals by the end of the year. Only 25 000 to 28 000 individuals are currently receiving treatment.
Lewis also said it is crucial to ensure that treatment is available nationwide and not just in the capital, Maputo. Lewis also said women in the country are more vulnerable than men to HIV/Aids, and called on the govern-ment to empower women, pass laws against sexual violence and alter men’s views about sexuality to help reduce HIV transmission.
Lewis praised some of the country’s pilot projects to fight HIV/Aids. He urged the Health Ministry to adopt the Dream programme, which has been successful in preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission, nationally. He also called for more health workers to be trained.
Source: Kaisernetwork.org
Estimated Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 1 847 990 at noon Wednesday July 19
Mozambican dream: A new centre for children infected with HIV, which opened in Maputo this week, plans to use advanced technology to monitor and treat the disease.
The project is part of the Italian NGO Sant’Egidio Community’s Dream (Drug Resource Enhancement against Aids and Malnutrition) programme.
‘The centre wants to empower activities for the treatment of children, and wants to guarantee to HIV-positive mothers the possibility of not transmitting the disease to their children,” said Andrea Riccardi, founder of the NGO.
The centre contains a substantial laboratory, including equipment to measure viral loads, and CD4 counts.
Riccardi also inaugurated a nutritional centre in the southern city of Matola.
The centre treats 709 children, who are infected with HIV, or whose parents have died of Aids. ‘We give food and medical care to the children,” said the centre’s director, Lidia Lisboa, ‘because sometimes the children appear here ill, and their parents don’t take them to hospital, saying they have no money. We can’t leave the children like that.”
According to data from the Sant’Egidio community, 8 000 patients are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs through the Dream programme — about a third of all those receiving ARVs in Mozambique. — Don Camillo, CAJ News