24 December 2008
Maputo — Leprosy "is no longer a public health problem in Mozambique", President Armando Guebuza announced on Wednesday.
Delivering his annual State of the Nation address to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Guebuza recalled that almost three years, in January 2006, he had spoken of leprosy as remaining a problem in six central and northern provinces.
He had then urged Mozambican society to work to ensure that this disease could be effectively eradicated by the end of 2008. Guebuza announced that this had been achieved.
"We can say that 2008 was the year of the elimination of leprosy", he declared. "It has ceased to be a public health problem in our country. This is a case of Mozambicans producing their better future".
Guebuza said that this year has seen an increase of almost 50 per cent in the number of HIV-positive Mozambicans receiving the life-prolonging anti-retroviral therapy. When he spoke to the Assembly in December 2007, there were about 88,000 patients receiving anti-retroviral drugs. By 31 October this year, the number had risen to 121,000, and the government's projection is that by the end of December 127,000 Mozambicans will be on anti-retroviral therapy.
"Thanks to the expansion of this service", said Guebuza, "people infected with HIV no longer see it as an inevitable death sentence. Instead it can be compared to chronic diseases such as diabetes".
The results from the last epidemiological surveillance round (involving the testing of pregnant women at sentinel sites throughout the country) suggested that the prevalence of HIV had stabilized at around 16 per cent of the population aged between 15 and 49.
This was still a grim picture, and so the government had set up a Reference Group on HIV prevention with the task of identifying the factors that continue to drive the epidemic. Guebuza said that the report from the group blamed "the existence of sexual relations with multiple partners and with no or little resort to protection by condoms". On top of that came "the influence of economic, cultural and social factors".
The Group's report formed the basis for the "Strategy to Accelerate the Prevention of HIV Infection", which the government approved in November.
In addition to prevention, it was crucial that HIV-positive people should be aware of their condition. "The secret of treating this disease", said Guebuza, "lies in its early discovery. To guarantee this we encourage people to take the HIV test".
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