Andrew Kathindi
The Country Director for the US Centre of Disease Control (CDC) in Namibian, Eric Dziuban says over 200,000 people in Namibia are living with HIV.
“There are 200,000 people living with HIV in this country and that is around 12 percent of all adults in this country being HIV positive. The numbers are lower in young children, because we have such a successful programme in preventing mother to child transmission,” said the CDC Country director.
“The latest data shows that people who are on treatment, taking their medicine every day virally suppressed, their life expectancy is basically exactly the same as if they weren’t living with HIV. That’s something we could have never said 20-30 years ago. It shows just how remarkably far we’ve come. The treatment is very good, and has less side effects than it used to.”
He said that the current ARV medication is potent and powerful at suppressing the HIV virus.
“Somebody living with HIV can have all the same dreams that they had before they got infected. A young person with HIV can think about getting married or having children or going to university or having a career or watching their grandchildren graduate from school; all of these things are possible. There’s a lot of hope there now than there was previous.”
Dziuban said while COVID-19 has taken the front seat for attention in terms of fighting infections, the HIV budget has been maintained from the government and donors.
“It’s actually gone up this year. There has been an increase in HIV funding, at least coming from President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) this year. We saw around a 10 percent increase in HIV funding,” he said.
“This funding is making a difference, Namibians are getting on treatment, and they’re living longer lives. There are less HIV deaths than they used to be.”
Meanwhile Chief Medical Officer for HIV/STI subdivision in the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Laimi Ashipala has said that while community engagement with HIV patients was initially disrupted because of the state of emergency and the lockdown, engagements continued using online and telephonic follow-ups.
“Although it does not replace the benefit of in-person contact, there have been efforts to ensure that they still making contact with patients. As lockdown measures were lessened, the community health worker started going into neighbourhoods, obviously adhering to the pandemic safety precautions just to get to patients. So, I just want to caution that when the public sees these community health care workers going into the community, know they are having protective equipment, and they are aware of the cautionary measures,” she said.
