HIV/AIDS still a threat to country

HUMAN immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally.
It is killing far more people than the Coronavirus and other curable diseases.
It was projected that around 37.7 million people were living with HIV worldwide in 2020, while an estimated 1.8 million new infections occurred the same year.
Approximately 5.2 million people were living with HIV in the Asia and Pacific, which is the third highest in the world after the two African regions, the Western and Eastern Africa.
The virus continues to be a major public health problem in Papua New Guinea.
Around 48,000 people in PNG were estimated to be living with HIV in 2020, when official data was obtainable.
From this figure, 59 per cent of them were women of 15 years and older and 7 per cent were children less than 14 years.
Despite having made a significant progress in increasing access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy and HIV prevention interventions, transmission still remains high in many sub-populations and geographic locations.
The Government, through the Health Department, has exhausted millions of kina to end the pandemic, but it has spread vastly since its entry in 1987.
It is equally a costly and frightening issue and should be eliminated.
A high incidence of sexual aggression, violence against women, the impact of alcohol on sexual behaviours and commercial sex are just some of the reasons for the high level of HIV infection in the country.
But, if the Health Department maintains the supply of condoms, then it is indirectly encouraging people to have more sex, increasing the possibility of adultery and related social issues.
Likewise, if doses are persistently supplied, then those who are infected will still remain healthy and continue to transmit the virus.
How are we going to contain this deadly virus?
If the Government wants to save some money for other essential socio-economic activities, it should make it mandatory that whoever is infected should be recorded under a specific database and be monitored at all circumstances or put under solitary confinement.
If they want to move freely like other individuals, they should have something attached to so they are easily identified.
Reveal their identity by ensuring that they wear a recommended bracelet or so in order that it will help the citizens to recognise them and avoid having sexual contact with them.
This can definitely help because people will know who they are interacting with.
I hope the authorities are considering this.

Petrus Gand,
Kerox Dust