The United Nations (U.N) has said that the fight against AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa has stalled as more and more countries in the region shift their attention to controlling the spread of COVID-19. The U.N says that countries in the region have diverted resources meant to fight AIDS in controlling the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, AIDS virus-related illnesses could claim more than half a million people. In a joint report, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS warned that interruptions to HIV/AIDS treatment could “set the clock back by more than a decade to 2008 when more than 950,000 AIDS deaths were observed in the region”. In 2018, an estimated 470,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa, the report says. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of WHO says; “The terrible prospect of half a million more people in Africa dying of Aids-related illnesses is like stepping back into history.” We must read this as a wake-up call to countries to identify ways to sustain all vital health services, he added Ghebreyesus says that there is need to ensure that global supplies of tests and treatments for both HIV and Tuberculosis reach the countries and communities that need them most. “We should save people from Covid-19 and HIV and other life-threatening diseases.” A six-month disruption in treatment services could lead to an excess of 471,000 to 673,000 AIDS-related deaths in one year, the report says, making it inevitable that the world would miss the global 2020 target of fewer than 500,000 fatalities from the disease worldwide. According to WHO statistics, an estimated 25.7 million people in Sub- Saharan Africa were living with HIV in 2018, with 16.4 million (64 per cent) receiving antiretroviral therapy. These people now risk having their treatment interrupted, the agencies warned, “because HIV services are closed or are unable to supply antiretroviral therapy because of disruptions to the supply chain, or because services simply become overwhelmed”. The report also highlighted that disrupted services could reverse gains made in stemming mother-to-child transmission of HIV Since 2010, new HIV infections among children in Sub-Saharan Africa have declined by 43 per cent (from 250,000 in 2010 to 140,000 in 2018), thanks to the high coverage of HIV services for mothers and their children in the region Every death is a tragedy, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima, observed. “We cannot sit by and allow hundreds of thousands of people, many of them young, to die needless deaths.” If HIV health services were stopped by COVID-19, the study indicates that several countries could see a drastic rise in new infections among children. Byanyima says that the pandemic must not be an excuse to divert investment from HIV. “There is a risk that the hard-earned gains of the Aids response will be sacrificed to the fight against Covid-19, but the right to health means that no one disease should be fought at the expense of the other.”
