This year, the small West African country of Togo has managed to decrease its HIV infection rate by 50% in the last five years, the country’s National Council for the Fight against Aids, (CNLS) said at a review meeting in Lomé recently.
Togo's goal is to eradicate Aids as a public health problem by 2030.
The decrease in new infections and HIV-related deaths, according to the National Coordinator of the CNLS, Vincent Pitché, is attributable to various initiatives taken by the country's authorities.
In 2021, the Association des Femmes Amazones Zen (AFAZ) opened a drop-in centre in Lomé, the capital of Togo, where female sex workers can find refuge and help.
The centre provides HIV prevention and testing services, the treatment of sexually transmitted infections, care for people living with HIV, and assistance to survivors of gender-based violence.
Effective actions such as these made in Togo are needed to accelerate the fight against HIV/Aids and eradicate it all together.
According to African Leadership Magazine, across Africa, the adoption of prophylactic treatments, such as voluntary medical male circumcision, has expanded.
Since 2007, nearly 10 million men have undergone circumcision in the 14 WHO priority countries of Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, according to the article.
In 2022, five African presidents launched Global Fund's $18 billion (about R312. 2 billion) campaign to restore progress against Aids, TB and Malaria amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The presidents of the Democratic Republic of Congo DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa made a major commitment to advance the fight against HIV/Aids.
According to the United Nations reporting, of the global total of 34 million women and men living with HIV today, the vast majority — an estimated 23.5 million or 69% — live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
We must equalise for women and girls to reduce their HIV risks, says Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS.
“In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women are three times more likely to be infected with HIV than boys and men of the same age. The driving factor is inequality.”
“Enabling girls to stay in school until they complete secondary education reduces their vulnerability to HIV infection by up to 50%. When we include comprehensive sexuality education and other measures for girls’ empowerment, then their risk is reduced even further. That is why 12 African countries have come together in the Education Plus Initiative, supported by the United Nations, to make this happen.”
“Beyond this, we must combine services for sexual and reproductive health together with services for preventing and responding to sexual and gender-based violence and HIV.”
To end Aids, we must tackle the inequalities in resourcing, added Byanyima.
“The Covid-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine have increased inequality worldwide. Every day, G20 countries receive $136 million in debt repayments from poor countries in the South. Meanwhile, in these countries, debt repayments are four times more than they spend on health and twice what they spend on education.”
Byanyima says that in the midst of a crisis of debt, austerity and inequality hitting developing countries, some rich countries have cut back aid for global health and are considering even deeper cuts, and said that this is not right.
“Now is not the time to step away. It is the time to step up.”
“It is through international solidarity that we reduced inequalities in financing and made amazing gains against Aids, including bringing more than 28 million people onto life-saving treatment. And we must complete the job.”
IOL