infections

The Tanzanian government, in partnership with non-governmental organisation which fights against HIV/AIDS, are set to embark on a special programme to minimise HIV/AIDS new cases in the region.

Regional HIV/AIDS coordinator, Dr Mohamed Iyulu, says the programme will target people who are at high risk of contacting the diseases identified as, Key Vulnerable Population (KVP).

A study has found that men who have sex with men (MSM) have a high prevalence of HIV, with Durban having the most men testing positive for the virus compared to Johannesburg and Cape Town.
 
Researchers at the Human Sciences Research Council, states that, "In Durban, the prevalence is unusually high among respondents at 48.2 percent, in Cape Town, the overall prevalence was 22.3 percent. Johannesburg was at 26.8 percent."
 
The study, called the Marang Men's Project, was conducted from 2012 to 2013 in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban among 925 MSM.
 

According to the United Nations, AIDS-related deaths and further infections are on the decline worldwide.

At the opening session of the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, international actors emphasised the need to intensify the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) highlighted the progress made globally, and especially in developing countries.

The Badilika Foundation, a faith-based organisation working to transform lives of sex workers, states that Malawi will not win the fight against HIV and AIDS unless sex workers are empowered to demand safe sex as one way of HIV reducing transmission.

The foundation’s executive director, Forbes Msiska, argues that, "Clients of these sex workers are mostly married men who have stable families and failure to empower them to demand condom usage is likely to lead to many innocent partners at home getting infected as the client will get infected and later infect their partners."

The National Institute of Combat of AIDS (INLS) says that, at least 200 000 people live with the HIV virus in Angola.
 
Speaking at a workshop on the strengthening of the actions for the acceleration of the civil society's response to HIV/AIDS, INLS director, Dulcelina Serrano, disclosed that since 2004, the prevalence has risen from 0.6 to 2.3 percent.
 
Serrano further adds that among HIV-positive pregnant women, the figure stands at 15 300, where 119 400 people need to receive antiretroviral treatment, including pregnant women.
 

The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) says the proportion of South Africans infected with HIV has increased from 10.6 percent in 2008 to 12.2 percent in 2012.

According to the HSRC’s National HIV Prevalence, Incidence and Behaviour Survey, the total number of infected South Africans now stands at 6.4 million; 1.2 million more than in 2008.

It says women aged between 30 and 34 and males aged 35 to 39 have the highest infection rates: 36 percent of females and 28.8 percent of males in these respective age groups contracted HIV.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced multimillion-rand partnerships with South African institutions to develop new medicines and vaccines for HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria.

The foundation partnered on two multi-year programmes, one with the Medical Research Council's Strategic Health Innovation Partnerships (SHIP) unit and the other with the University of Cape Town's Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3-D).

New HIV infections in South Africa have fallen by a third since 2004, according to a report handed to Deputy President, Kgalema Motlanthe.
 
The report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) shows that between 2004 and 2012, the number of new HIV infections fell from an estimated 540 000 to 370 000.
 
UNAIDS Country Coordinator for South Africa, Catherine Sozi, says that government’s increased roll-out of the antiretroviral (ARV) therapy programme had averted an estimated 780 000 deaths between 2004 and 2012.
 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) report has found that the rate of new tuberculosis (TB) infections has decreased internationally, however, about three million infected people escape diagnosis.
 
WHO TB programme director at WHO Global, Mario Raviglione, states that the quality of TB care is what has driven down millions of TB deaths worldwide.