New HIV infections in the country have reduced by 82 percent in 2022, Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) has announced. Dr. Charles Berabose in charge of HIV, Hepatitis and other infectious diseases treatment at RBC said that currently, around 5,000 new HIV infections are being recorded every year. “We have a target to have 95 percent of HIV/AIDs positive persons know their status and be taking antiretroviral medicines by 2030,” he said. Already, he said that 94 percent of HIV positive persons are currently taking antiretroviral medicines. The latest figures show that the overall HIV prevalence among people aged 15-64 was 3.0 percent with 3.7 percent in women and 2.0 percent in men. Berabose said the prevalence is also estimated at 4.8 percent in urban areas and 2.5 percent in rural areas. “Although the HIV prevalence is lower in the general population, it is still higher in female sex workers at 35.5 percent,” he said while speaking to journalists during a training on STIs. He urged people to regularly go for HIV testing so that those found positive start antiretroviral medicines on time. Some of HIV signs include pain areas such as in the abdomen, dry cough, fatigue, fever, loss of appetite, malaise, night sweats, or sweating, nausea, persistent diarrhea, vomiting, or watery diarrhea, throat, soreness, mouth ulcers or white tongue, opportunistic infection, headache, oral thrush, pneumonia, red blotches, skin rash, swollen lymph nodes among others. The ongoing prevention measures, he noted, include optimised HIV testing services , HIV case-finding strategies through index testing and partner notification services, self-testing, prevention of Mother to Child Transmission, voluntary medical male circumcision, Condom programming and distribution, HIV prevention services for key populations and targeting people at high risk of acquiring HIV infection among others. Over 210,000 people currently live with HIV in Rwanda. Berabose said that in order to reduce new infections, over 33 million condoms are distributed per year.
