Luanda - The Secretary of State for Public Health Carlos Alberto de Sousa Wednesday in Luanda announced plans to increase dissemination of information on health, mainly HIV/AIDS, through community awareness campaigns on disease.
Carlos Alberto de Sousa was speaking at the opening ceremony of the “Workshop on the epidemiological and programmatic condition of the national response to HIV/AIDS in the country”.
The official said that MINSA will continue to support all initiatives aimed at improving the health of populations, within the Executive's projects for public health.
According to the Secretary of State, Angola is one of the countries in the sub-Saharan region with the lowest HIV prevalence, with a prevalence rate of 2 percent in the national average.
The data point to 320,000 people living with HIV in Angola, of whom 17,000 are new infections.
About 36,000 children under the age of 14 live with HIV and 190,000 women are carriers of this disease in the country. According to data, 15,000 people died from AIDS in the same period.
As for the coverage of antiretroviral treatment in adults, the percentage stands at 43 and in children 19 percent.
The vertical transmission rate for HIV is estimated at 15 percent. The Secretary of State stressed that the treatment, prevention and transmission rates have improved, although it is still far from reaching the global goals, calling for the need to develop strategies to speed up the process for better results.
According to him, the primary health care and, in particular, health care from mother to child, continue to be priorities.
He highlighted the Nascer Livre para Brilhar (Born Free to Shine) campaign, which reduced the HIV transmission rate from 26 percent in 2018 to 15 percent in 2021.
Carlos Alberto de Sousa said that mother-to-child prevention services (PTMF) had increased significantly, from three services in 2004 to 650 in 2017 and 743 in 2021, being implemented in 164 municipalities and integrated into reproductive health services.
He said that there were improvements in the logistics of antiretroviral drugs, after the simplification of treatment regimens with the introduction of DOLUTEGRAVIR (DTG) for adolescents and adults.
The latest UNAIDS global report points to about 37.7 million people living with HIV, 84 percent know their HIV status, 73 percent are on antiretroviral treatment and 66 are virally suppressed.
In this same report, it was estimated that worldwide there are 1.5 million new infections and about 680,000 AIDS-related deaths.
