To On the occasion of World AIDS Day, which is celebrated on December 1 each year, our editorial team focuses on Pediatric HIV. His figures, the difficulties faced by these small…
“587”. These are the national pandemic figures for children in outpatient treatment centers (CTA) in Gabon. But in the norm, 1,500 children are expected according to national estimates. All of which means nearly 1,000 children remain to be screened and treated. And, of these 587 children living with HIV, 2/3 are in Libreville, the Gabonese capital, reveals the director general of the National Program for the Fight once morest Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV/AIDS (PNLIST), Dr Raïssa Ndong Assapi Okouyi.
What must be kept in mind is that the diagnosis remains difficult to perform on this category of individuals because the majority of these children are already orphans of one or even both parents, regrets the DG of the PNLIST. Consequences, in the follow-up, these children are neglected abandoned and made even more vulnerable. Other difficulties faced by these children: despite the free treatment of antiretrovirals (TTT ARV), the latter is surrounded by a series of examinations that are quite difficult to obtain, very often due to the precarious state of the guardians. Without forgetting that the children, affiliated to the National health insurance and social guarantee fund (CNAMGS), lose its benefit, following the death of the parent, main insurer. Likewise, the TTT ARV protocols, made up of numerous tablets, are not always accepted by the child himself, who does not understand why he should take medication.
What you also need to know regarding pediatric HIV is that most children infected have been infected through mother-to-child transmission. ”But we also record cases of contamination by rape, early marriage, or early sexual intercourse.” However, since the 2000s, a program for the Prevention of HIV transmission from mother to child (PMTCT) supported by UNICEF in a national plan for the elimination of this PMTCT drawn up in 2012 is active and concrete on the national territory. The activities of this plan aim to ensure that no child born of HIV-positive mothers is infected with HIV. This is to attest to the fact that the first children infected with HIV and who are still living thanks to TTT ARV are already over 30 years old and are already parents themselves despite their illness. But definitely, the problem of shortages of TTT ARVs, associated with pediatric formulations, constitutes a major obstacle to patient loyalty in healthcare structures, causing many people to lose sight of them. To which must be added other social phenomena such as letting a third party raise one’s child, which often does not help to find cases of HIV.
It is therefore important to urge the population to check the serological status of all family members, and particularly children under 15 whose parents have died of HIV, especially mothers. Hence this vast HIV screening campaign open to all from December 1 to 15 at the PNLIST to give everyone the opportunity to know their status.
Line R. ALOMO
Libreville/Gabon