2024 World AIDS Day:183,000 AIDS patients decline therapy - Ghana AIDS Commission expresses worry

The Ghana AIDS Commission has revealed that about 183,000 of the HIV population in the country is failing to adhere to anti-retroviral therapy.

The Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Dr Kyeremeh Atuahene, who disclosed this, emphasised that the situation was holding back efforts at achieving the global 95-95-95 target of ending AIDS.

The 95-95-95 project is an ambitious declaration by the United Nations that calls on Member States to ensure that 95 per cent of people living with HIV know their status, 95 per cent of diagnosed individuals are on anti-retroviral therapy, and 95 per cent of those on anti-retroviral therapy are achieving viral suppression by 2025.

Dr Atuahene said an estimated 35 per cent of the 334,095 Ghanaians living with HIV had not tested and, therefore, did not know their HIV status, with about 55 per cent of the total HIV patients not on anti-retroviral treatment.

“Having a good number of people living with HIV either not being diagnosed or receiving anti-retroviral treatment is costing the nation in many ways. We can talk of the cost relating to new infections and loss of lives due to AIDS-related causes.

These needless new infections and AIDS deaths could have been prevented if people living with HIV were diagnosed or adhered to treatment,” he said.

Dr Atuahene said HIV anti-retroviral medicines not only prevented disease progression but also suppressed the viral load to an undetectable level thereby preventing transmission.

He disclosed this yesterday at the national durbar to mark the 2024 World AIDS Day celebration.

The global theme for the celebration is "Take the rights path", but locally, the commemoration was on the theme: "Ending AIDS together, stepping up prevention".

According to the Ghana AIDS Commission, each day in Ghana, 50 people get infected with HIV, while 34 people die of AIDS-related causes.

World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day is observed globally every year on December 1.

In Ghana, the 2024 commemoration was shifted to yesterday instead of Sunday, with a national durbar held by the Ghana AIDS Commission in Accra.

It was attended by the Minister of Health, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, implementing partners and service providers, HIV communities, traditional authorities and representatives of the United Nations system.

Anti-retroviral

Dr Atuahene said the cost of people living with HIV either not knowing their HIV status or receiving anti-retroviral treatment manifested in the loss of productivity as well.

He stated, for instance, that the estimated average productivity lost to HIV-related ill-health was about five days per month, and that this loss to the country’s economy was better appreciated when the average productivity lost to HIV was aggregated to HIV-related illnesses, with the estimated 183,000 people living with HIV who were not on anti-retroviral therapy. 

Financing

Speaking on behalf of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Executive Oversight Minister of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, announced that the government was working to ensure sustainable financing of the national HIV response, adding that it was exploring opportunities to integrate HIV clinical services into the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Additionally, he said, the government was working to support the efforts of civil society organisations in stepping up HIV prevention, care and support services.

The Programmes Manager of the National AIDS/STIs Control Programme, Dr Stephen Ayisi Addo, gave the assurance that from next year, there would be no shortage of HIV commodities for people living with HIV, explaining that the arrangement followed measures that had been put in place to ensure that there was commodity security in the country.

He said the 2030 target of ending AIDS and the 2025 target to achieve epidemic control would soon come, and, therefore, appealed to all to work hard to ensure that treatment programmes were fully complemented with prevention.

He stated that it was a pity that between January and September this year, almost 4,567 people died from AIDS, with  3,458 of them being females.

During the same period, he said, the control programme identified about 35,460 new positive cases.

The United Nations AIDS Country Director, Dr Sucilla Perez, said despite advances in treatment, over nine million people living with HIV still lacked access to life-saving anti-retroviral therapy, while many continued to face barriers such as stigma, discrimination and punitive laws.

The World Health Organisation Country Director, Dr Frank Lule, described HIV as a complex health challenge that could not be separated from social determinants such as poverty, gender inequality and violence that were all complicated by stigma and discrimination.

He said protecting human rights was a key component of achieving universal HIV care and breaking down those life-threatening barriers to access.