By Charles Katabalwa.
The 2020 Uganda Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (UPHIA) report, indicates that the prevalence of HIV among adults aged 15 to 49 years declined from 6 percent in 2016 to 5.5 percent as of 2020
The report also shows that the infection rate among children born to mothers living with HIV increased from 1.7% last year to 2.7% this year due to poor adherence to treatment.
Daniel Byamukama, Head of HIV Prevention at the Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) in Kampala while announcing the forthcoming National HIV and AIDS symposium
Scheduled for November 14-16, 2023 ,at kololo Independence ground under the theme “My Responsibility Towards Ending AIDS by 2030”.
The same National HIV and AIDS Symposium 2023, will feature the National HIV and AIDS Scientific Meeting, the Annual joint AIDS Review, the Philly Lutaya Memorial Lecture, Financing Dialogue together with programming and science exhibitions.
Byamukama said that currently the injection is under review but according to the number of people tested it is safe and waiting the National Drug Authority (NDA) to approve which they think will be early January 2023 .
“People are burdened of taking tablets for PrEP but will be easier for Injectable PrEP and this PrEP target Sexually active People at high Risk including Sex workers, adolescent among other ” says Byamukama.
“The country through Global Fund has made orders of about 10,000 (Ten thousand) doses of Injectable PrEP but planning 30,000 dozes by 2025, it will be for free of Charge and taken only by HIV negative person every two 2 months to avoid contracting the disease” he revealed.
He assured the public that Injectable drugs for HIV is not yet near to be existing but the commission together with World Health organizations (WHO) are fighting day and night to make it exist.
Byamukama said that about 17000 people in Uganda died of HIV/Aids- related diseases, majority of whom were men and attributed this to poor health seeking behavior among the men and 52,000 new infections were registered says all these are the reason why the Injectable PrEP are being brought.
PrEP is used by people without HIV who are at risk of being exposed to HIV through sex or injection drug use.
Uganda AIDS Commission conducts Joint Annual AIDS Reviews of the implementation of the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan (NSP) to fulfill its mandate of Strategic Information management for the response including reporting obligations.
The 2023 JAR/ Global AIDS Response Progress Reporting marks the seventh year of reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the 6th year of the PFTI implementation.
SDG 3 (“Good health and well being”) has among its targets the goal of ending communicable diseases including HIV and AIDS (‘By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water- borne diseases, and other communicable diseases’).
JAR 2023 also comes after the Mid Term review of the NSP 2020/21 –2024/25. Therefore, this review gives the country an opportunity to assess the state of the national response and progress in achieving HIV related targets during the 3rd year of the NSP.
Furthermore, the review will contribute to a better understanding of the global response to the HIV pandemic, including progress toward the global targets set in the 2011 Political Declaration and the SDGs.