Addis Ababa — Ethiopia has been making a commendable progress towards achieving the goal of ending HIV as a public health threat by 2030 despite challenges remain, stakeholders highlighted.
World AIDS Day was observed today at Adwa Victory Memorial for the 36th times in Addis Ababa with a theme "Take the Right Path" in the presence of government officials, community representatives and relevant stakeholders.
Speaking at the occasion, Health State Minister Dereje Duguma highlighted the ongoing challenges posed by HIV in Ethiopia, revealing that over 600,000 individuals are currently living with HIV.
The state minister emphasized that Ethiopia is actively implementing strategies to control and prevent the transmission of HIV, noting that a slight reduction of HIV prevalence from 0.9 percent two years ago to 0.87 percent currently.
The change reflects Ethiopia's progress in combating the spread and control of epidemic towards achieving the goal of ending HIV as public threat by 2030, he added.
The state minister underscored the importance of enhancing collaboration among stakeholders and international partners in supporting Ethiopia to achieve a 95-95-95 target by 2030 with the focus on diagnosing, treating, and preventing the virus effectively.
UNAIDS Country Director to Ethiopia, Krittayawan Boonto said that despite the challenges, Ethiopia is on the right track--leading the HIV response and showing strong commitment with a good progress towards the 99-95-95 global goals.
"As of 2023, the national program results are 90 percent of the estimated 600,000 people living with HIV know their status; 94 percent of those know their status is receiving lifesaving antiretroviral therapy. This is the very impressive progress...," the country director stated.
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She underscored that young people, particularly young women and girls require close attention and urgent interventions since they are exposed for HIV for a number of reasons.
She reaffirmed her organization's commitment to continue working with the people and the government of Ethiopia to end HIV/AIDS as public health threat and to ensure a sustainable resilient HIV response.
"UNAIDS together with UN entities in Ethiopia and all development partners stand ready to continue to work with the people and government of Ethiopia to end AIDS as public health threat and to ensure a sustainable resilient HIV response for people living HIV and affective communities."
US Ambassador to Ethiopia, Ervin Massinga, on his part praised Ethiopia for the tremendous progress made on HIV responses.
Despite challenges, Ethiopia maintains high coverage of lifesaving antiretroviral therapy among people living with HIV as well as viral protection which has enabled to significantly reduce the number of new HIV infections, he added.
The US government has invested nearly 3.5 billion USD to support the HIV/AIDS response in Ethiopia, the ambassador noted; pointing out that the investments in laboratory, health information systems, surveillances, supply chain management have the leverage to strengthen the overall health system as well as responding to different outbreaks of different types of diseases.
The ambassador commended the Ministry of Health for its commitment to controlling the spread of HIV epidemic.
