SOME 247 new cases of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) have been recorded at the end of May 2018.

According to government’s mid-year report, the recorded cases represent a worrying trend of increase which has been observed from 2013 to 2017.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), HIV targets the immune system and weakens people’s defence systems against infections and some types of cancer.

As the virus destroys and impairs the function of immune cells, infected individuals gradually become immunodeficient. Immune function is typically measured by CD4 cell count.

Immunodeficiency results in increased susceptibility to a wide range of infections, cancers and other diseases that people with healthy immune systems can fight off.
The most advanced stage of HIV infection is Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which can take from two to 15 years to develop, depending on the individual. AIDS is defined by the development of certain cancers, infections, or other severe clinical manifestations.

HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, said WHO. It has claimed more than 35 million lives so far. In 2017, 940 000 people died from HIV-related causes globally.
There were approximately 36.9 million people living with HIV at the end of 2017, with 1.8 million people becoming newly infected in 2017 globally.

Some 59 per cent of adults and 52 per cent of children living with HIV were receiving lifelong antiretroviral therapy (ART) in 2017. Global ART coverage for pregnant and breastfeeding women living with HIV is high at 80 per cent, the WHO said.

Statistics from WHO also showed that globally, there were 36.9 million people living with HIV in 2017. Some 21.7 million people were receiving antiretroviral treatment by end 2017 and 59 per cent of people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral treatment in 2017.
Locally, according to the mid-year report, government continues to invest in the National Care and Treatment Centre, which has piloted the point-of-care testing for non-HIV sexually transmitted infections, during extended hours, to facilitate key populations.
Back in 2016, then Public Health Minister Dr. George Norton was extremely proud of Guyana’s remarkable progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

“We must acknowledge that Guyana has demonstrated a steady decrease in the number of AIDS cases and the number of AIDS-related deaths,” Dr. Norton said.

And as far as preventing babies being born with HIV from mothers who are infected, another plus had been recorded. This was achieved through robust application of the Prevention of Mother-to-Child-Transmission (PMTCT) programme by the Ministry of Public Health.

Government continues to invest heavily in the health care system. The 2018 Budget focused primarily on consolidating the efforts of the public health programme to modernise public health services, generally, and improve regional health service delivery, specifically.
To this end, $14.4 billion of a budgeted $33.3 billion for 2018 was expended in the first half of 2018 on enhancing the public health sector – an improvement over the similar period for 2017.