TANZANIA – Ministers and representatives from twelve African countries have committed themselves, and laid out their plans, to end AIDS in children by 2030.

The first ministerial meeting of the Global Alliance to end AIDS in children, hosted by the United Republic of Tanzania, marked a step up in action to ensure all boys and girls with HIV can access life-saving treatment, and that HIV-positive mothers can have babies free from the virus.

Ministers and representatives laid out plans which include providing testing to more pregnant women and linking them to care, as well as finding and caring for infants and children living with HIV.

International partners have also set out how they would support countries in delivering on those plans, which were issued at the first ministerial meeting of the Global Alliance to end AIDS in children.

The Alliance will work to drive progress over the next seven years, to ensure that the 2030 target is met.

In partnership with networks of people living with HIV and community leaders, ministers laid out their action plans to help find and provide testing to more pregnant women and link them to care. The plans also involve finding and caring for infants and children living with HIV.

The Dar-es-Salaam Declaration on ending AIDS in children was endorsed unanimously.

“This meeting has given me hope,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, the UN agency leading the global fight to end the disease.

“An inequality that breaks my heart is that against children living with HIV, and leaders today have set out their commitment to the determined action needed to put it right.”

Commitment and support

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) welcomed the leaders’ commitments and pledged the agency’s full support.

Every child has the right to a healthy and hopeful future, said UNICEF Associate Director Anurita Bains, adding “we cannot let children continue to be left behind in the global response to HIV and AIDS.”

The Global Alliance to end AIDS in children was unveiled at the AIDS conference in Montréal, Canada, in July 2022.

Currently, around the world, a child dies from AIDS related causes every five minutes.

Only half (52%) of children living with HIV are on life-saving treatment, far behind adults of whom three quarters (76%) are receiving antiretrovirals.

In 2021,160 000 children newly acquired HIV. Children accounted for 15% of all AIDS-related deaths, despite the fact that only 4% of the total number of people living with HIV are children.

Tanzania is among the 12 countries with high HIV burdens that have joined the Alliance in the first phase.

The others are Angola, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

While HIV and other infections can be transmitted during pregnancy or breastfeeding, prompt treatment, or pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for at-risk mothers, can interrupt the process.

Last year, Botswana became the first African country with high HIV prevalence to be validated as being on the path to eliminating vertical transmission of HIV, meaning the country had fewer than 500 new HIV infections among babies per 100,000 births.

The vertical transmission rate in Botswana is now two per cent, versus 10 per cent a decade ago.

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