E Cape losing war against HIV as youth ignore testing, safe sex
US consul-general Virginia Blaser has warned that the Eastern Cape continues to face an HIV epidemic of alarming proportions.
The rate of infection is soaring despite interventions.
Young people are being affected the most, said Blaser.
She said US stats on HIV in 2018 revealed that 807,721 people in the Eastern Cape population are living with HIV.
She said 70 new people were diagnosed with HIV each day in the province, totalling 30,000 new infections every year.
She is in the province this week for engagements with provincial stakeholders to strengthen partnerships with the US to combat HIV-Aids.
On Tuesday she visited the Empilweni day clinic in Gompo with health MEC Helen SaulsAugust. The clinic is one of the beneficiaries of US-funded HIV programmes in the province.
There are currently 590 USfunded projects rolled out in healthcare centres in five of the worst-hit districts – OR Tambo, Buffalo City Metro, Alfred Nzo, Chris Hani and Amathole.
In BCM, R8m was donated to projects that fight HIV.
Blaser said the Eastern Cape was fast losing the battle against HIV and was running out of time to turn things around. She said the province alone was facing a higher disease burden than some African countries.
“Seventy-five percent of HIV infections are within these five districts. They present the biggest burdens and they are where we are focusing our HIV programme.”
She said the numbers of people getting tested, and if positive, getting treatment and staying on it, were plummeting.
“The numbers are very bad in the Eastern Cape. We are not getting ahead of the disease.”
Blaser said new infections were most prevalent among young people as they formed a large part of the population living with HIV.
“There are young people who feel fine and don’t know their HIV status but are HIV positive, and they are spreading it to the people they care about.
“Or they are positive, but they don’t go on treatment or stay on treatment.
“If someone doesn’t deliver this message the way young people will absorb it, these people are going to die. They’re going to get sick.”
She said crucial conversations about HIV needed to take place until people realised the severity of not knowing their status. “If you get on treatment right away, your prospects are very good but if you wait, you cause irrevocable damage to your immune system. No matter how uncomfortable it is, we need to continue talking about HIV.”