Last year alone, America Contributed $ 3.7 billion to humanitarian aid For Sub-Sahara Africa. This included at least 73 percent of the health programs, including HIV treatment and prevention. For those living with HIV, most of the benefits of this funding have come through the President's emergency plan for AIDS Relief – or Pepper, which purchases and supplies HIV medicines for needy countries. Since being launched by former US President George W. Bush more than two decades ago, Pepfar has saved millions of lives in Africa.
Prior to Pepfar, HIV was often sentenced to death in Africa. Today, many people living with virus are capable of leading a normal life for drugs that have been sent through it. Assistance programs have also allowed sub-city countries to make significant progresses with HIV epidemic through recording rates of infections, improve testing and make significant progress in reducing mother-to-child transmission.
In fact, many countries of Africa including Nigeria are on bump To control HIV epidemic and come near the global “95-95-95” goals-95 percent of the people living with HIV are diagnosed, 95 percent people get antiretroviral therapy, and antiretroviral 95 percent of the therapy receives receive viral suppression. , He where a patient has no detectable HIV and is effectively free from the risk of transmitting the virus.
Now, it seems about going to Peppar's lifeline, public health workers are worried that these benefits can be reversed. Ishah says, “We will have a close collapse of the health care system if all funding is stopped after a 90-day freeze, as the Nigeria government alone will not be able to provide essential services,” says Ishah.
Ishah and his colleagues published Study On the will of people living with HIV in Nigeria to pay for treatment out of pocket in 2021. This research found that many people recognize the life-saving importance of maintaining their treatment, and therefore ready to pay, the cost of the drug is a major obstacle to do so.
The value of one month of the general version of Truvada, a drug is used to protect against infection before and after exposure, with the treatment of HIV, Cost About $ 60 per month. At the top of it, viral load, immune system is the costs of regular laboratory tests to check health, and may be caused by infection for liver and kidney conditions and conditions. For low-income countries in Africa, it presents a big challenge: at least 41 percent of the population of Sub-Sahara Africa Lives on low More than $ 1.90 per day; The national minimum wage in Nigeria is $ 40 per month.
Funding gap shows readiness to plug the Nigeria government Voted Earlier this week, 150,000 HIV treatment kits were released for 4.8 billion Naira ($ 3.2 million). But although there is a good sign for short term, it is necessary to maintain the country's HIV treatment and prevention program in terms of long -term withdrawal of support by Washington.
Should the American funding freeze be maintained after a 90-day stagnation, many people living with HIV in Africa are unable to pay continuous payment from pockets for drugs and laboratory testing. “Once someone is fully on medicine and the person has obtained undesirable viral load, it means that the person cannot transmit the virus,” says Ishah. “But whether they should remember their treatment and medicines, the viral load can grow again, putting their families and loved ones in danger.”