Hard for pregnant women to get HIV care than others - report

Pregnant women living with HIV are less likely than treatment-eligible adults overall to receive antiretroviral therapy.

Also, treatment coverage among children living with HIV
in 2012 was less than half that of adults, underlining the importance of addressing specific needs of women and children to reduce the negative impact of the epidemic.

This is according to a statement by Amref Health Africa-Tanzania says the world has made great progress towards the global vision of zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths and similarly, tremendous progress has been made in the last 15 years towards the Millennium Development Goal of halting and reversing the spread of HIV.

“Nevertheless, HIV is still a great global concern,” warns the report.

It goes on to cite UNAIDS which says 22 million people were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2012, 58 per cent of whom were women, while 230,000 children were newly infected.

“The main reasons include inadequate scaling up of prevention strategies, and limited access to reproductive health services as well as HIV treatment and care,” says the report.

“As an international African organisation working side by side with communities, Amref Health Africa believes that by focusing on the health of women and children one can improve the health of the whole community,” says the report.

“For Amref Health Africa, closing the gap means empowering and enabling individuals and communities everywhere to access the services they need,” it reads.

 Amref Health Africa aims to bridge the gap between the people in the community and the formal health system by giving communities knowledge, skills and means to transform their health as well as supporting peripheral health facilities to fulfill their mandate. We are particularly concerned about the continent’s high maternal mortality, to which HIV/AIDS is a major contributor.

“We must ensure that prevention and treatment services are widely accessible to women to reduce maternal deaths and to save babies from infection,” Amref says.

In Tanzania, Amref Health Africa reached a total of 218,774 people (115,512 males and 103,262 females) with HIV Testing and Counselling (HTC) services, through 42 outlets that provided onsite and outreach HTC services. In addition 1,203 women and 185 children were reached with prevention of mother-to-child-transmission (PMTCT) services in four districts.

In Uganda, Amref Health Africa has supported 18 government health facilities to introduce an integration model of service delivery to offer voluntary medical male circumcision, HIV counselling and testing, management of sexually transmitted infections, and linkage to other services such as ART, family planning and infertility disorders.

In the Northern Arid Lands of Kenya, more than 62,000 individuals were counselled and tested for HIV and received their test results. Of the 349 clients who tested HIV positive, 92 percent were linked to care and treatment.