UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

Malawi239Today, increased numbersof Malawians have accessto HIV prevention services,AIDS care and treatment;and stigma surroundingHIV has decreased.UNAIDStreatment had dropped tremendously in Malawi; also, in the “3 by 5”, WHO introduced asimplified approach to treatment delivery which facilitated treatment access. Thus Malawicould aspire to double the number of people receiving antiretroviral medicines to 50 000.Malawi had a maximum of 4000 people receiving antiretroviral treatment in 2002. InDecember 2005, the number receiving antiretroviral therapy had shot up to 46 000.Jack Phiri developed AIDS-related symptoms in 1999, and discovered he was HIVpositive in 2001. Today, he receives free care and treatment. He is happy to be alive. “Ihave gone through the thick and the thin of it”, Phiri reflected. “A lot of people werebetter than me and are no longer of this world. Having gone through all that I have, hereI am, leading a normal life. I don’t wake up one morning not knowing how I will feelthat day. I can almost guarantee that it will be a nice, normal day”.“3 by 5” was only a first step in ensuring wide-scale AIDS treatment access. Today, thegoal is to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, care and treatment by 2010. Butin Malawi as well as many other countries in Africa, two key related challenges must beaddressed in order to achieve such a far-reaching goal. These are the human resourcescrisis and building service-delivery capacity in the districts.In May 2007, Mwale explained: “We have a serious human resource crisis in Malawi.As I speak now, out of the one million people that are living with HIV in Malawi, ourestimate is that about 170 000 require treatment today. Yet we have only 50 000 peopleon treatment. It’s a mammoth task, both in terms of the monies that will be required andthe human resource capacity within the health sector to be able to scale to that level”.