Kemish: Young to middle-aged at risk

HIV/AIDS has a crippling capacity at the community and economic level in PNG with the biggest group contracting the disease between15 and 49 age group, Australian High Commissioner Ian Kemish said yesterday.
“This means that it is affecting those people who are the primary income earners in our homes and subsistence farmers in the villages and is a significant challenge for many years,” Kemish told guests at the afternoon tea held at the high commission yesterday to celebrate Word AIDS Day.
“The most recent estimates last year show that the HIV prevalence rate is 0.9% among those between the ages of 15 and 49. This means that it is estimated that the total number of people living with HIV in PNG is 34,000 including more than 3,000 children,” he added.
He said HIV was not just about people who contracted the virus but that its impact spread way beyond those who were directly infected.
Kemish said the good news was that testing and treatment services were now much more available and that treatment meant that HIV was no longer a death sentence and people with HIV could live longer.