The Ugandan government has launched a new HIV/AIDS prevention strategy and plan for the elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV by 2015, a top ministry of health official said.
Zainab Akol, Program Manager at the AIDS Control Program (ACP), [said] that the plan will virtually eradicate mother-to- child transmission of HIV in the country.
Under the plan, measures to be adopted include a more cost- effective treatment regimen, beefing up health infrastructure and increasing women's access to family planning.
The East African country has over 200,000 young people infected with HIV from their parents through child-birth...
"The science is available, correct and feasible to stop further HIV in children. This we must do come rain, come shine. I appeal to fellow Ugandans to rise up to the challenge and we stop all new HIV infections from occurring from now and onwards," she said.
Uganda started offering Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) in 2000, with the initial program calling for a single dose of the anti-retroviral (ARV), Nevirapine, during delivery.
The program was revised in 2006 to introduce combination of ARV regimens, but the delivery of those drugs has not been consistent, something the new plan aims to change.
The country has one of the highest fertility and pregnancy rates in the world which yields 1.5 million pregnancies. It has 6. 5 percent HIV prevalence in pregnancy.
Akol said Uganda as a country gets 90,000 HIV pregnant women and 25,000 infected babies annually, which she described as so alarming. The country has about 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
"We have not less than 200,000 young people infected with HIV mostly from their parents on top of 100,000 from sexual transmission. This is a heavy load of new infections that has accumulated to nearly 1.2 million Ugandans living with HIV/AIDS, majority of whom are women and 10 percent are children less than 15 years of age," said Akol.
"Ugandans must wake up and stop further transmission of HIV/AIDS which is being driven by multiple sexual partners, alongside marriages, mobile communities including sexual workers, poverty and population explosion," she said.
She appealed communities to take children with HIV especially orphans or any suspects to have free HIV treatment at government health centers.
She said if preventive efforts are not taken to control the disease among married couples, sexual workers and the population explosion, the country will register another 700,000 cases of the epidemic by 2015.
"If we can't address this situation and we continue like this, another 700,000 Ugandans will acquire HIV by 2015. This will be another explosion," she said.
She said the government has also embarked on a nationwide male circumcision program as part of its HIV/AIDS prevention strategy.
The project that targets 15-59 years old is aimed at promoting good health through prevention of the spread of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS.
The nationwide circumcision project is being implemented by the country's AIDS Information Center.
The government began drafting the circumcision policy in 2008 and there has been criticism of the delay of the official launching of the program.
"All Ugandans should reawaken, re-energize themselves, contemplate and talk about HIV to themselves, the spouses and other sex partners," said Akol.
Source: Xinhua, 2 February 2012