1 December 2007
Maputo — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Saturday urged that routine testing for HIV, the virus that causes the deadly disease AIDS, should be introduced into the country's health units.
He acknowledged, however, that this option would imply changes to Mozambican legislation and to the administrative procedures currently in force.
Speaking in Maputo at ceremonies marking World AIDS Day, Guebuza said that routine testing was "a type of intervention that can have an impact in reversing the current picture".
He insisted that the human rights of the patients must be respected, and it was this, in his view, that distinguished routine testing from compulsory testing.
Mozambique's national HIV prevalence rate appears to have changed little over the last three years. The epidemiological surveillance round of 2004 suggested that 16.2 per cent of Mozambicans aged between 15 and 49 were HIV-positive.
According to Health Minister Ivo Garrido, the latest survey, of 11,000 pregnant women across the country, came up with a figure of a 16 per cent HIV prevalence rate.
Guebuza warned that nobody should take comfort from this apparent stabilisation in the infection rate. "In the first place, the figure of 16 per cent is still very high", he said. "It means that one in every six Mozambicans is infected. It means that one and a half million of our fellow countrymen are infected, and that there are still 500 new infections every day".
There are significant provincial variations in the prevalence rate. It used to be considered that central Mozambique had the worst problem. In 2004, Sofala province had the highest prevalence rate - 26.5 per cent.
But today's figures put Sofala on 23 per cent. There have been similar falls in Manica and Tete, where the rates have fallen from 19.7 to 16 per cent, and from 16.6 to 13 per cent respectively.
But the situation in the south of the country has worsened dramatically. In Gaza province the HIV prevalence rate has risen from 19.9 to 27 per cent. Maputo province is not far behind - the rate here has risen from 20.7 to 26 per cent. For Maputo City the rise has been smaller - from 20.7 to 23 per cent.
An obvious factor in the epidemic in Gaza is migrant labour.
There is a long tradition of men in Gaza working on the South African gold mines. Migrants have long been recognised as a high risk group: becoming infected in South Africa, they pass the disease on to their wives when they come home.
Two northern provinces saw a decline in infections. In Niassa the rate found in 2004 was 11.1 per cent, and in Nampula it was 9.2 per cent. Garrido said the latest figures for both provinces was eight per cent. In the third northern province, Cabo Delgado, the prevalence rate rose from 8.6 to 10 per cent.
In the remaining two provinces, the infection rates are more or less stable. In Inhambane the rise in HIV prevalence was from 11.7 to 12 per cent, and in Zambezia from 18.4 to 19 per cent.
"We have to face this epidemic as a serious obstacle to our development", said Guebuza. "These infection figures threaten to undermine the results we are achieving in the fight against poverty. So each one of us, infected or not, should feel responsible for reversing the current levels of infection".
Prevention, he continued, remained "the cheapest, most effective weapon, and is accessible to all of us".
Counselling and voluntary, confidential testing should also be encouraged, said Guebuza, since "early discovery of the disease increases the likelihood of success in interventions that can prolong the patient's life".
AIDS was no longer a death sentence, he pointed out, and treatment with the life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs is now available in all Mozambican districts. Since AIDS can be treated, but not cured, this put it on the same level as other chronic diseases such as diabetes.
On top of all this came the suggestion for routine HIV testing in health units, which Guebuza recognised would be a controversial move.
Guebuza concluded by asking leaders at all levels of society to set an example and play a role in the fight against the epidemic.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
