08 Dec 2015

Prevention interventions on the fight against HIV/AIDS remain a challenge, despite government’s robust response to the epidemic.

The director of health services, Dr Khumo Seipone, said this when delivering a keynote address to mark commemoration of the World AIDS Day in Lobatse recently.

Dr Seipone said prevention interventions had remained a challenge as reflected by under-performance of the national response in prevention outcomes.

She said following the introduction of the Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission Programme (PMTCT) in 1999, transmission of HIV from mother to child was reduced from 40 per cent in 2001 to less than two per cent in March 2015 nationally.

She said Lobatse District HealthManagement Team (DHMT) had managed to reduce the transmission of mother to child to 1. 6 per cent which she said was commendable.

Dr Seipone noted that interventions such as Antiretroviral, introduction of option B+ had reduced new infections.

She said HIV transmission continued to be exacerbated by the increase in multiple and concurrent sexual partnership (MCP) which increased from 11.2 per cent in 2008 to 15.8 per cent in 2013 among the sexually active population (15-49 year olds).

Dr Seipone said one prevention intervention that had not made much inroad in the country was Safe Male Circumcision (SMC).

She said while significant resources had been put into providing the service, the uptake had not been encouraging.

“We still register low numbers of people being circumcised in Lobatse since the inception of the programme in 2009,” she said.

She implored all eligible men to circumcise as the intervention had proved to significantly reduce the risk of sexually contracting HIV infection.

She also implored the churches to take a lead in the fight against HIV pandemic by helping the government to inculcate good morals and principles in the communities and also encourage followers to utilise the prevention and treatment services provided.

On other issues, Dr Seipone said the emerging rates of other communicable diseases such tuberculosis, hypertension, sugar diabetes and cancer amongst others were a concern to the Ministry of Health. 

She said non-communicable diseases are now the world largest killers and a major challenge to development.

She appealed to all entities to come up with all inclusive approach to deal with these challenges and urged them to continue efforts of being responsive to these challenges.

Dr Seipone further encouraged all to test for HIV/AIDS in order to help the country to reach the global targets of 90 per cent of people living with HIV knowing their status, 90 per cent of people who know their HIV positive status to be on treatment and 90 per cent of people on treatment to have viral suppression.   Ends