Dakar - The tide may
have turned in the global fight against AIDS, but too many
people in sub-Saharan Africa are developing and dying of
AIDS-related diseases due to limited testing and problems with
treatment, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday.
More than half of people infected with HIV worldwide are now
getting drugs, and AIDS-related deaths have almost halved since
2005, putting the world on track to hit the target of 30 million
people on treatment by 2020, the United Nations said last week.
Despite much improved access to antiretroviral (ARV) drugs
in sub-Saharan Africa, an "unacceptably" high number of people
are developing AIDS and dying due to drug resistance, treatment
being interrupted and late diagnoses, the medical charity said.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for almost three-quarters of
the one million AIDS-related deaths recorded last year,
according to data released this month by the UNAIDS agency.
"Stigma and a lack of information and knowledge about HIV
and AIDS across Africa means a huge number of people are getting
left behind," Sofie Spiers, a doctor and HIV specialist with
MSF, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Paris.
"We need to ensure increased access to ARV drugs are backed
up by awareness raising at a community level, and better care
for those who have been on treatment for years," Spiers said
from this week's International AIDS Society (IAS) conference.
Many AIDS patients across sub-Saharan Africa show signs of
treatment failure when they arrive at health facilities - often
too late - and need to be switched from first-line to
second-line ARV drugs more rapidly to combat resistance, MSF
said.
Rising resistance to HIV drugs could undermine the progress
made against AIDS unless countries urgently review their HIV
treatment programs and switch to different drug regimens, the
World Health Organization (WHO) said last week.
The situation for those living with HIV and AIDS in
sub-Saharan Africa could deteriorate even further as donor
funding declines, according to several public health
organisations.
Donor government funding to support HIV efforts in low- and
middle-income countries decreased to $7 billion last year from
$7.5 billion in 2015, the lowest level since 2010, said a report
published last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation and UNAIDS.
"With global political will and funding for HIV on the
decline ... these patients arriving at hospitals sick with AIDS
will have any hope of reprieve snatched away," said Mit Philips,
health policy advisor at MSF.