Let’s seek alternative funding for HIV/AIDS
The President of the Society of AIDS in Africa, Dr David Pagwesese Parirenyatwa, recently warned that without innovative approaches to sustainable domestic financing, Africa risked regressing to the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s when many died from AIDS due to the lack of medicine.
Dr Parirenyatwa consequently called on Africans and the diaspora to rise to the challenge of strengthening health systems with accountability, transparency and universal access to care.
The call, made at the Society for AIDS in Africa’s second International Steering Committee meeting to kick-start preparations for the 23rd International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) scheduled to take place in Accra later this year, was a profound reality of Africa's situation in the effort to combat and contain AIDS.
As the world has come to accept it, AIDS, a condition that attacks the immune system of the patient, has no cure for now.
Alternatively, medical scientists have found an antidote that can sustain an individual infected with the disease for as long as they live on it religiously.
This way, a patient can live normally like the average healthy person without the burden of fear of imminent death, usually triggered by some of the many fallout conditions of the disease.
As a condition that broke out across the world and threatened to wipe out the productive population of the youth, the burden of care for its patients and research for its cure has been a universal effort.
Africa, whose youthful population is among the most vulnerable demographics in the world, has been a beneficiary of the developed world's magnanimity to contain HIV/AIDS.
Indeed, global establishments such as the Global Fund and Aidsfonds, as well as international grant opportunities, and initiatives such as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are among Africa's main funding sources for HIV/AIDS.
Essentially, Africa's fate in terms of its ability to fight and win the war against HIV/AIDS remains heavily in the hands of foreign governments and organisations outside the scope of the continent.
This is the danger. Africa risks bungling the HIV/AIDS fight if the source of funding is disrupted.
“Given the recent action taken by the US government to freeze funding for HIV support, it is crucial that as we work within our respective committees, we address the domestic financing of health systems and the sustainability of our HIV/AIDS response," Dr Parirenyatwa stated at the conference in Accra.
These are probably prophetic words given the United States' revised position in relation to its commitment to offer support to any country.
The collapse of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with its attendant scrapping of thousands of jobs and withdrawal of funding support to countries and projects across sectors and nations is a timely reminder of the need to take one's destiny into their own hands.
In 2022, the World Health Organisation African Region had 25.6 million people living with HIV, with about 380,000 people dying from AIDS-related illnesses.
Africa's case is obviously alarming, given that at the close of the same 2022, the global HIV infections were 39 million. It meant that Africa alone was home to about 64 per cent of the world's HIV cases.
America's refusal to be a perpetual benefactor to the world, particularly developing nations, should compel a rethink among African nations about how to solve a problem that threatens the continent's relevance in a competitive global space.
As Africa continues to advance efforts to unite on common fronts for the common development of the people, it should factor in measures such as funding for drugs and intensive prevention campaigns to tackle the issue.
We dare say that the best bet is to cut new infections to the barest level to avoid channelling scarce resources into treating HIV patients.
