The fact that eight children died from HIV last year is cause for concern.
Advocate Temo Sasau said they were part of the 126 deaths from HIV last year. And that, he said, came off data provided by the Health Ministry.
What will also concern a lot of people is the fact that a four-month-old baby was the youngest victim.
Mr Sasau made the revelation at Nakama Village during an awareness session.
The baby, he said, died in Labasa because the mother failed to get treatment, even though she knew of her HIV positive status.
We agree this should not be happening now, especially with available assistance.
We raise this as a concern in the face of the rise in HIV cases around the country.
There obviously is a stigma that many people still associate with HIV. And this, it seems, is impacting some who are infected.
“Mothers, if you are pregnant, get tested,” Mr Sasau said.
“If you test positive, there is medical treatment that can protect your baby from HIV. Babies do not need to die.”
That is the key here. Babies do not need to die! There is available medical treatment that can protect them from HIV.
The challenge then is for people with HIV doing the right thing.
That means getting tested. It means overcoming fear and the stigma to seek medical treatment.
In 2024, we recorded our highest annual number with 1583 new cases, compared with just 415 the year before, which was a 281 per cent jump.
Now what is a major concern is the fact that 41 children were diagnosed with HIV last year, 32 of them through mother-to-child transmission.
That’s a pretty sad indication of the status of our HIV cases.
And this is a massive increase from just 11 child cases in 2023.
So aside from all the encouragement we can give those with HIV, we should all push for more awareness and support for mothers to feel safe about getting tested early.
Again, we say, our numbers are rising and appear to be going out of control.
We need to be addressing that. We need to work together to get our numbers down.
The connection to drug addiction is also a major concern that we must address.
We have a major problem it seems. We are tied down by a complex web of stigma, fear and misinformation that, to some extent, prevents people from accessing life-saving assistance.
It is alarming that infants are dying from a disease that can be managed with proper care and medication.
We must stop the fear and protect our children!
