WHO, African Leaders Pledge to End AIDS in Children

By Chinomso Momoh
February 2, 2023

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has reiterated its commitment to supporting countries with technical leadership and policy implementation towards ending AIDS in children by 2030.

This was as ministers and representatives from 12 African countries recently committed themselves and laid out their plans to end AIDS in children by 2030.

The countries are Angola, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Development Diaries reports that international partners have set out how they would support countries in delivering on those plans, which were issued at the first ministerial meeting of the Global Alliance to end AIDS in children.

‘WHO is committed to supporting countries with the technical leadership and policy implementation to realise our shared vision of ending AIDS in children by 2030’, the WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a statement.

The meeting, hosted by the government of Tanzania, marks a step up in action to ensure that all children with HIV have access to life-saving treatment and that mothers living with HIV have babies free from HIV.

The WHO also noted that the alliance will work to drive progress over the next seven years, to ensure that the 2030 target is met.

According to statistics from the health body, currently, around the world, a child dies from AIDS-related causes every five minutes.

It said only half (52 percent) of children living with HIV are on life-saving treatment, far behind adults of whom three quarters (76 percent) are receiving antiretrovirals.

‘In 2021, 160,000 children newly acquired HIV. Children accounted for 15 percent of all AIDS-related deaths, despite the fact that only four percent of the total number of people living with HIV are children’, the statement read.

Executive Director of The Global Fund, Peter Sands, urged all stakeholders to work in partnerships to make sure the action plans endorsed are implemented.

Source: WHO