Over 16,000 Ethiopians die of HIV/AIDS every year – Study

The Ethiopian government on Wednesday revealed that over 16,000 of its citizens die due to HIV/AIDS every year.

The new study, which was released by the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, reviewed the status of HIV/ADIS in the country.

It revealed that there were some 16,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS annually, while the virus caused in excess of 16,000 deaths every year.

“Some 450,000 people across the East African country are also currently on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART),’’ state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) quoted the Ethiopian Public Health Institute as saying.

Ethiopia, since 2016, has been working to prevent more than half a million HIV/AIDS-related deaths and up to 80,000 new HIV infections by 2020.

The target is part of the second five-year national Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP-II), effective from 2016 to 2020.

According to figures from the HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention Office (HAPCO), the East African country, during the first five-year GTP-I, was able to reduce new HIV infections from 0.28 per cent in 2010 to 0.03 per cent in 2015.

The HAPCO was established in 2002 as an agency of the Ministry of Health and the executive arm of the National AIDS Council (NAC).

NAC, chaired by the President of Ethiopia, spearheads the multi-sectoral forum composed of government, private, non-governmental, religious and civic society representatives and people living with HIV/AIDS.

“Ethiopian government’s HIV prevention activities since 2010 mainly focused on people most at risk of infection, with activities that targeted on identifying places and people with a high risk of HIV infection,’’ it noted.

Credit: Xinhua/NAN