Viral load undetected

About 80 per cent of patients undergoing Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) in Maputo city have undetectable viral loads, according to a report in Thursday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”.   Addressing on Wednesday the opening session of a meeting in Maputo, the Executive Secretary of the National AIDS Council (CNCS), Francisco Mbofana, said the milestone encourages authorities to put emphasis on sexual education for girls to control transmission and new HIV infections. Mbofana declared that the reduction of gender inequalities, and sex education in schools, as well as at home, can reverse the current scenario.

In 2020, he said, 98,000 new infections by HIV/AIDS were recorded, of which 39,000 (40 per cent) were diagnosed among people, particularly girls, aged between 15 and 24. Maputo city recorded 3,000 new infections. He pointed out that there are lingering challenges in Maputo for eradicating the disease, since five per cent of the infected people know nothing about their HIV status, a situation that raises great concern.

 The Health and Social Welfare city councilor, Alice Abreu, said that in order to reach every patient who is HIV positive, the authorities have expanded medicine service delivery to the chemists in a partnership agreed in the past three months. The service, she added, will improve access to anti-retroviral treatment, expand the daily time to access medicines and outgrow the number of patients undergoing uninterrupted treatment. She also said that activities such as community testing, counseling, awareness and timely accession and retention in treatment will resume very soon.