AU Aids action |11 April 2006

Hoping to combat the continued spread of the disease across the region, the AU leaders deemed 2006, “Year of Acceleration of HIV Prevention in the African Region,” a statement acted on today by World Health Organisation staff and local health ministry workers across the continent.

WHO country liaison officer, Cornelia Atsyor, said that the move has been made due to the “alarming numbers of newly diagnosed infections of HIV every year.”

According to UN figures 3.2 million of the five million new infections annually occur in Africa.

Dr Atsyor said that the continued spread of the pandemic has caused a fall in previously improving African health indicators.

Such effects have already been seen; increasing infant mortality rates and reducing life expectancy regionally, with reductions of up to 12 years in some national life expectancies, cutting the average expected life span to 35 years.

Workforces have been hit by the dwindling numbers, leading to falling national GDPs and raising dependency ratios with escalating numbers of HIV/Aids orphans.

“We now have the technology to treat symptoms of HIV, prolonging life, but prevention is the key,” said Dr Atsyor.

And while Seychelles has so far been spared the worst ravages of the disease, the head of the Communicable Diseases Control Unit of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Agnes Chetty, warned that the number of HIV/Aids cases in Seychelles is on the rise.

According to Dr Chetty, the prevalence rate of the disease among 15 to 49 year olds currently stands at 0.3% of the population, up ten fold in 15 years.

More worryingly still the number of newly detected cases in 2005 reached 45, compared to an average of 18 to 20 in the preceding years.

Dr. Chetty said she was pleased that testing increased last year to 7000 compared to 5000 tests in previous years and said that distributing information on prevention of HIV transmission is “nothing new…it’s all about getting down to the community”.

A similar message came from the WHO, which is planning on targeting schools by incorporating life-skills into curricula in order to teach young people to avoid the disease.

“Prevention will empower the people,” said Dr Atsyor.

And the need for prevention was highlighted by Dr Chetty who expressed the concern that if the number of HIV cases were to continue to double every year the Ministry of Health programme to combat the illness would struggle to remain sustainable.

Recent studies in Seychelles have shown that although people have good knowledge of the modes of transmission of the HIV/Aids virus, there has been little change of behaviour to avoid the disease.

Hoping to address the problem, the Ministry of Health is organising a National Forum on April 20.

The launch of the AU’s Year of Acceleration of HIV/Aids Prevention in Africa will take place at four launch sites: Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Dakar in Senegal, Khartoum in Sudan and Pretoria in South Africa, all four of which will take place simultaneously and be linked via satellite.