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Guyana records close to 9000 HIV cases, majority virally suppressed – Health Minister
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony
Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Health has recorded close to 9000 cases of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), majority of which are virally suppressed, following insistent treatment and intervention taken by the health sector.
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, made this disclosure on Friday during the national launch of the Lymphatic Filarias is Elimination Campaign for Regions Three and Four, which was held at the Carmel Secondary School, Charlestown.
In its effort to reduce the burden of infectious diseases, the Health Minister asserted that the Health sector has gone a far way in the treatment of HIV patients.
“Once we continue to treat people, it means that they will be living even longer. So, you would see that we have around 9,000 people living with HIV but what is remarkable is that most of those people are virally suppressed,” Minister Anthony said.
Virally suppressed means the inability to transfer the virus to another person while the viral load is the measure of a number of viral particles present in HIV in an individual’s bloodstream.
Taking this into account the Minister continued, “…So it means that you (Health sector) are very effective in managing these patients and we hope that the trend continues and people continue to come in to take their treatment, go do their test and so forth.”
Furthermore, the Minister also revealed he is confident that the prevalence of Hepatitis C will be reduced. He explained, “So up to a year… a year and a half ago persons who were infected by Hepatitis C were not able to get treatment and the simple reason being that the treatment was too costly.”
According to the minister, initially the treatment cost about US $80,000 which was then broken down to about US $20,000. Currently, he noted that it’s approximately US $2,000 if it is to be bought from the manufacturer.
“However, through a partnership that we have with the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), they have been able to buy these medicines in bulk and we have been able to access these medicines from them. We are getting them at less than US $120 for a patient…So, what we now have is about 42 persons who have been cured of Hepatitis C,” Minister Anthony said.
Meanwhile, in the case of Tuberculosis (TB), the minister revealed that the health ministry has moved from recording 500 cases per year to 300 cases as of last year.
The health minister asserted that the interventions that have since been made will continue to be used to ensure the downward trend.
“So, over the last couple of years we have seen a clear distinction with how we are managing persons with different types of infections and that is very important because we want to reduce this burden of infectious diseases in our country,” the health minister stressed.
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