The HIV/AIDS pandemic has remained the highest-profile public health challenge, although more people die from curable diseases. Last year the UNAIDS estimate of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS was reduced from 40 million to 33.2 million, writes Thompson Ayodele in Daily Independent
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has remained the highest-profile public health challenge, although more people die from curable diseases. Last year the UNAIDS estimate of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS was reduced from 40 million to 33.2 million. The reduction in the number of victims has continued, generating ripples in public discourse and lending credence to earlier assertions that infection figures being bandied about were indeed questionable.
In the last few years, HIV/AIDS has received tremendous support from individuals, governments and foundations for helping victims or preventing the spread of the virus. A lot of funds continue to flow into HIV/AIDS programmes.
In order to command massive support for HIV/AIDS campaign, there is a propensity to overstate the actual numbers of victims primarily to gather more political and financial support but surveys conducted by scientists in Mali, Zambia and South Africa reveal that AIDS is not as widespread as believed.
In many countries in Africa, most health policies have been concentrated on HIV/AIDS. This is understandable. For now there is no known cure for the virus. What is available at present is expensive and complicated life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).
The over-estimation is dangerous. It further questions other assessments and puts at risk continuing support to curb the disease. Inflated figures clearly undermine credibility. Although steady progress is being reported across Africa, the virus continues to kill more Africans each year. In spite of the huge amount of spending on HIV/AIDS, the epidemic is spreading into the remotest villages threatening the very survival of rural communities, despite further spending on education, abstinence and condomisation.
One of the reasons there was over-estimation of the HIV/AIDS figures was to command huge resources and find jobs for campaigners. Often local people are not co-opted and the funds are administered by organizations from donor countries.
For instance, PEPFAR is the largest donor for AIDS in many countries. It provides 62 per cent of AIDS resources in Zambia, 73 per cent in Uganda and 78 per cent in Mozambique. Most of the funding is channelled through international organizations based in those countries. The import of this arrangement is that there is no clear way of handing over responsibility to local stakeholders in the long-term.
While HIV/AIDS kills many people, there are other preventable and curable diseases that kill more. Many can be treated for a fraction of what HIV/AIDS gulps up.
This article was published in the Daily Independent on 6 March 2008. Please read the original article here.
Thompson Ayodele, Director Initiative for Public Policy Analysis, Lagos, Nigeria