Maputo — Mozambican Health Minister Armindo Tiago said on Monday that the country ranks in fourth position on the list of countries with high rates of HIV infections, with a national average rate of new infections estimated at 364 cases a day.
Addressing in Maputo the launch of the Second Stigma Index Study in Mozambique, to be conducted in partnership with the UNAIDS agency, Tiago declared that the only countries with higher infection rates are South Africa, Nigeria and Russia.
“The current situation poses a continuous and permanent challenge and also pushes us to take coordinated and decisive actions to reduce the number of new infections, and improve the living standards of the infected and affected people,” he said.
In spite of government efforts to implement policies and strategies to reduce the number of new infections, to ensure access to health care and treatment for people living with HIV and to mitigate the effects of the HIV pandemic, Tiago declared that there are lingering challenges to health care and adherence to antiretroviral therapy.
“Several factors contribute to this challenge, among them stigma and discrimination,” he said, pointing out that currently very little is known about stigma and discrimination among people living with HIV as there is no updated and consistent data about the impact of the strategies implemented to eliminate the disease.
The Second Stigma Index Study in Mozambique, Tiago said, will help to bridge the information gap and will include groups that have often been marginalised in the past, including sex workers, gay men, drug consumers, prison inmates and transgender people. It will be conducted between June and December in six provinces (Maputo, Gaza, Sofala, Zambezia, Nampula and Cabo Delgado).
He added that the study is part of government efforts to implement adequate strategies to reduce stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV, and will be driven by global principles for an HIV/AIDS response based on human rights.
The UNAIDS country director, Eva Kiwango, said Mozambique has nearly 2.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS of whom about one million do not have access to treatment because of several factors, including stigma and discrimination.
“The study is a strong example of the strength of a partnership intended to move decisively towards the elimination of stigma and discrimination which hamper access to health care and more specifically access to antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV,” she said.
The representative of people living with HIV, Julio Mujojo, stated that the study will support an assessment of the historical impact of stigma and discrimination, as well as of present and future interventions intended to mitigate stigma of people living with the disease.
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