Today is being observed globally as World AIDS Day. The Day provides an opportunity for the international community to unite and fight against HIV, show support for people living with the disease as well as commemorate those who have died. The theme for this year’s commemoration is “Getting to Zero”.
The World AIDS Day was first held in 1988, four years after the virus was first identified. About 31 years after the appearance of the pandemic, more than 37 million people are currently living with the disease (2.6 million under the age of 15) and about 35 million have died of the sickness, making it one of the most destructive plagues in history.
The world has come a long way since the year 2000 in its collective effort at achieving the target of halting and reversing the spread of HIV. New infections have fallen by 35 per cent and AIDS-related deaths by 24 per cent in the past 15 years. Some 16 million people now have access to antiretroviral treatment, more than 11 million of them in Africa.
According to recent reports, some low and middle-income countries are already fast-tracking national AIDS responses. Most countries are doing their best, making substantial domestic investments, basing their HIV health-sector programmes on good data and simplifying prevention and treatment programmes.
A good number of them have ensured that 60% or more of all people living with HIV are aware of their HIV infection and receive antiretroviral treatment.
However, despite this global effort and collaboration of donor funding which accounted for 75 per cent in recent years, last year alone, more than two million people were sucked in by the virus worldwide – averaging 230 every hour and 5, 600 daily – while about 1.2 million died of the infection.
Of the 37 million people living with HIV, 25.8 million are located in sub-Saharan Africa where poverty holds sway, with about 790,000 adults and children killed in 2014 which accounts for about 66 per cent global deaths. About 1.4 million people became newly infected during the year under review.
In contrast, only 85, 000 new cases were recorded in the advanced Western and Central Europe and North America with only 26, 000 deaths in 2014. According to available statistics, the United Kingdom appears to be harbouring the lowest number of people living with HIV – about 100, 000 in all.
In Eastern Europe and Asia, about 140, 000 new infections were recorded, bringing the total number of those infected to 1.5 million, while 62, 000 lives were lost within the same period. About 280, 000 new cases were identified in the Caribbean, while 8,800 people lost their lives.
Nigeria, through the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and its state counterparts, has also keyed into the global endeavour.
Presently, there are over 3.4 million Nigerians sickened by the killer virus, with women accounting for 58 per cent. The country has made significant leap away from the obstacles that initially made the war against the disease very difficult to confront. One of them being the stigmatisation of those infected. But this has reduced drastically, enabling many sufferers, known as PLWA (people living with HIV/AIDS), to be gainfully employed and fend for themselves and their families.
The federal and state/ governments, NACA, reputable global organisations and philanthropists deserve commendation in this regard.
Also worthy of commendation is the global resolve to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of ending the epidemic by 2030. Only recently, a Nigerian university lecturer raised global hope for the cure of the dreaded pandemic.
The lecturer, Professor Maduike Ezeibe of Michael Opara University of Agriculture in Umudike, Abia state, said he has discovered a drug that can cure the HIV virus while addressing the media in Umudike. The professor of veterinary medicine sought collaboration from the federal government, pharmaceutical industries and universities in the country towards mass production of his drug called anti-viral therapy.
The don further claimed that the anti-viral therapy is clinically accepted globally as a cure for HIV/AIDS because it has been tested on persons who were positive to HIV/AIDS and it worked effectively. He also said that the drug “brought down the viral load of some of those who had tested positive to HIV/AIDS’’.
Another cheery development emerged recently when a major progress in the search for the cure/control of the virus was made by some scientists with the establishment of a centre by a pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States dedicated to eradicating the disease. A major focus of the new collaboration was the ‘shock and kill’ approach for curing HIV, which involves unmasking dormant HIV lurking in patients’ immune cells, before boosting the immune system to destroy all traces of the virus.
Perhaps, one of the reasons why the epidemic has persisted for decades without a cure is due to the fact that it takes AIDS as long as 20 years to imperil its victim. It takes Ebola just a few days, hence the quick response in finding an effective solution to the deadly virus.
As Nigeria joins the global community in marking the Day, we urge government at all levels to collaborate with various stakeholders to intensify the war against the scourge until the country is rid of the nightmare.
