New Aids strategy to focus on youth

The government has rolled out a new strategy to achieve an HIV/Aids-free nation with the main focus on prevention of new infections, especially among the youth.Dr Anita Asiimwe, the minister of state for public health and primary healthcare, yesterday launched the Rwanda HIV/Aids National Strategic Plan 2013-2018.“The youth today have the capacity to create an HIV-free generation. They have all HIV information at their disposal. This fight is not only targeting the leaders, everyone is a leader of their own lives, and every youth has a responsibility to say ‘no’ to unprotected sex,” Dr Asiimwe said.The National Strategic Plan has three main areas of interventions, including prevention of new infections by two-thirds from an estimated 6,000 per year to 2,000, care and treatment to halve the number of HIV-related deaths, and impact mitigation by ensuring that people living with HIV have the same opportunities like the rest of the population.Dr Sabin Nsanzimana, the head of HIV at the Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC), said to reduce new infections, government intends to raise condom use by 13 per cent, decreasing the estimated new infections in children from 1,000 to less than 200 and increase the fraction of male adult circumcision from 13 percent to 66 percent by 2018.Dr Sibongile Dludlu, UNAIDS country coordinator, said there is still much to do if we want a future free of Aids.“We will need continued investment, commitment and innovation to reach the vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero Aids-related deaths. On this World Aids Day, let us resolve to consign Aids to the pages of history,” Sibongile said.The National Strategic Plan is expected to cost about $1.9 billion (about Rwf600 billion).Big gainsThe National Strategic Plan will build on some gains the country has made in the fight against the pandemic. For example, there is already some progress toward eliminating new HIV infections among adolescents. Dr Nsanzimana said free consultation on HIV-related issues, strengthening Anti-Aids clubs in schools, counselling and promoting neuron art to fight stigmatisation has helped reduce infections among adolescents.“HIV prevalence among the adolescents as per the 2012 demographic health survey is one per cent. HIV among girls who are 18-24 is four times higher than that of the boys in the same age group,” Dr Nsanzimana said.He said RBC established a desk particularly to look at adolescent’s infections and it turned out that the people in that age group do not like to go for medication and if they do they do not go on time which increases infections. According to a new report, released by Unicef a head of World Aids Day that was marked yesterday, Aids-related deaths among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 increased by 50 per cent globally between 2005 and 2012.Unicef estimates the number to have risen from 71,000 to 110,000, in a stark contrast to progress made in preventing mother-to-child transmission.Dr Marc Herant, the director-general of RBC, said the fight against HIV is an ongoing battle and advised people not to become complacent. “We are in a battle we have not yet finished the fight, so we can’t put the tools down, not now. The media as well has a very important role to play with the massages they feed the public especially as far as behavior change is concerned,” Dr Herant said.There were about 2.1 million adolescents living with HIV in 2012 in the world. With additional funding and increased investment in innovation, many of the challenges could be overcome, the report says.Dr Nsanzimana said even though Rwanda has been hailed by UNAIDS as a country which has made significant advances in HIV response, there is clearly a great deal left to be done to achieve three objectives namely getting zero new infections, zero Aids-related deaths and zero discrimination against people leaving with HIV.“We still face 10,000 new infections every year and it is our plan to reduce these infections by two thirds in the next five years,” Nsanzimana said.