Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 2 186 609 at noon on July 11
Thousands of pregnant women have been tested for HIV since Liberia introduced a programme to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmissions eight months ago, according to the National Aids Control Programme (NACP).
‘The turnout of pregnant women at hospitals and clinics where we are doing this programme has been very impressive; records have shown that hundreds of women a month go through the test at each of the health centres,” said Josephine Freeman of the NACP.
The services are available at nine hospitals in six of Liberia’s 15 counties.
Freeman said the government hoped to roll out the programme to other hospitals and clinics, particularly in rural areas, with funding from Unicef.
‘By the end of this year, the plan is to gradually cover almost all of the counties,” she said.
Liberia has no national HIV prevalence figure, but health workers estimate infection rates at between 5% and 10%.
Source: PlusNews
Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 2 180 024 at noon on July 4
Assumptions that war and refugee crises fuel HIV/Aids epidemics have been disproved by a study of seven sub-Saharan African countries, which found no evidence that higher HIV infection rates accompany conflict.
A study published in The Lancet found that in conflict-affected parts of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, HIV prevalence decreased at similar rates as in unaffected areas. Nine of the 12 refugee camps surveyed had lower rates of HIV infection than the surrounding populations.
Even the use of mass rape as a weapon of war did not appear to have raised overall HIV infection rates.
Lead researcher Dr Paul Spiegel said previous studies did not take into account some of war’s effects against the spread of HIV, such as the difficulty of moving between rural and urban areas, and the breakdown of commercial sex networks.
PlusNews