Covid pushes 2020 Aids response target off track

The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed this year's world Aids response targets off the track, according to the United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids.

The agency says new data shows that the pandemic will have long-term impact on global HIV response and warns there will be close to 300,000 new HIV infections between now and 2022 and up to 148,000 more Aids-related deaths.

"The collective failure to invest sufficiently in comprehensive, rights-based, people-centred HIV responses has come at a terrible price," executive director Winnie Byanyima says in a report titled Prevailing Against Pandemics by Putting People at the Centre.

She warns that implementing the most politically-palatable programmes will not turn the tide against Covid-19 or end Aids.

To get the global response back on track, Byanyima says, will require putting people first and tackling the inequalities on which epidemics thrive.

UNAIDS has urged countries to learn from the lessons of under-investing in healthcare and step up global action to end Aids and other global health emergencies.

Byanyima says failure to invest in HIV responses has come at a costly price.

Botswana and Eswatini are the exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa  to have achieved or exceeded targets set for 2020.

UNAIDS says the sharp, sudden economic downturns associated with Covid-19 have increased poverty and hunger.

“... and there are fears that diminishing fiscal space in many countries will inevitably limit domestic investments in the HIV response in coming years.”

According to the agency,  HIV and Covid-19 pandemics and their responses underscore the importance of increasing the resilience of societies and health systems, and the importance of addressing underlying inequalities.

The UNAIDS document sets out targets for 2025 based on actions of countries that have been most successful in overcoming HIV.

The focus is on high coverage of HIV and reproductive and sexual health services alongside the removal of punitive laws, policies, stigma and discrimination.

"Far greater investments" in pandemic response will be needed along with "bold, ambitious but achievable HIV targets", UNAIDS says

It wants policies and actions to be on people most at risk and the marginalised -"young women and girls, adolescents, sex workers, transgender people, people who inject drugs and gay men and other men who have sex with men".

If these targets are met, the world will be back on track to ending Aids as a public health threat by 2030, UNAIDS maintains.

Nearly 700,000 people died of Aids-related causes while 1.7 million new HIV infections were recorded in 2019.

In Kenya, 1.6 million people live with HIV. Sixty-nine per cent of adults have access to treatment while treatment coverage among children aged under 15 is 61 per cent.

In 2018, 25,000 Kenyans died of Aids-related illnesses.

Siaya had the highest number of adults infected with HIV followed by Homa Bay.

A National Aids Control Council report of that year showed that Siaya recorded a prevalence rate of 21 per cent, Homa Bay 20.7 per cent, Kisumu 16.3 per cent, Migori 13.3 per cent and Busia 7.7 per cent.

The national prevalence rate is 4.9 per cent.

Other counties above the national prevalence rate include Nairobi at 6.1 per cent and Vihiga at 4.5 per cent.

In Homa Bay, the prevalence rate was higher in women at 22.1 per cent than in men at 19 per cent while the rate in Siaya was 22.4 per cent and 19.4 per cent in women and men respectively.

The counties with the lowest adult HIV prevalence are Wajir at 0.1 per cent, Mandera (0.2), Garissa (0.8), Baringo (1.3) and Marsabit (1.4).

Women are disproportionally affected by HIV. A UNAIDS research shows that of the 1.6 million adults with HIV, 910,000 (65 per cent) were women.

New HIV infections among women aged 15-24 were more than double those among men in a similar age group.