Leaders of 12 African countries have pledged to end childhood AIDS by 2030 at a meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The compromise welcomed by various UN bodies.
In addition, the first ministerial meeting of the Global Alliance to End Childhood AIDS was a step forward in ensuring that all children with HIV have access to life-saving treatment, and that HIV-positive mothers can have babies free of HIV. virus.
To this end, ministers and representatives established plans that include testing more pregnant women and linking them to health care, as well as searching for and caring for babies and children living with HIV.
hope and anguish
International partners outlined how they would help them meet these goals.
“This meeting has given me hopesaid Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDSthe UN agency leading the global fight to end the disease.
“An inequity that breaks my heart is the inequality against children living with HIV, but today leaders have set out their commitment to act decisively to correct it,” he added.
One death every five minutes
Currently, around the world, a child dies of AIDS-related causes every five minutes.
Approximately half of children living with HIV, 52%, receive life-saving treatmentcompared to 76% of adults who have access to it.
Furthermore, although children represent only 4% of people living with HIV, they are responsible for 15% of all AIDS-related deaths.
A nurse leads an awareness session on HIV transmission at a health center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Commitment and support
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) welcomed the leaders’ commitments and promised the body’s full support.
One of the UNICEF officials, Anurita Bains, said that all children have the right to a healthy and hopeful futureadding: “We cannot allow children to continue to be left behind in the global response to HIV and AIDS.”
The Global Alliance to End AIDS in Children was unveiled at the AIDS conference held in Montreal, Canada in July 2022 and the outcome of its first ministerial meeting, known as the Dar-es-Salaam Declaration , was unanimously supported.
There is no room for complacency
Tanzanian Vice President Philip Mpango called for moving forward as a collective.
“All of us, in our capacities, must play a role in ending AIDS in children,” she said. “The Global Alliance is the right direction, and we must not continue to be complacent. 2030 is at our doors“.
Tanzania is among the 12 high HIV burden countries that have joined the Alliance in the first phase.
The others are Angola, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
tests and treatments
The work will focus on four pillars:
- Early testing and optimal treatment for infants, children, and adolescents
- closing inequalities in the treatment of HIV-positive pregnant and lactating women elimination of mother-to-baby transmission
- Prevention of new HIV infections among pregnant and lactating adolescents and women
- Address the issue of rights, gender equality and structural barriers that hinder access to services
moving forward is possible
UNAIDS believes that progress is possible, as 16 countries and territories have already obtained certification for the validation of limiting mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis.
Although HIV and other infections can be transmitted during pregnancy or breastfeeding, prompt treatment, or pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for mothers at risk, can interrupt the process.
Last year, botswana became the first African country with high HIV prevalence to be validated as on track to eliminate vertical transmission of HIVwhich means that the country had fewer than 500 new HIV infections among babies per 100,000 births.
The vertical transmission rate in Botswana is now 2%, up from 10% a decade ago.
