Ministry of Health and Medical Services is worried that the cases of HIV might double again this year.
While presenting the public submission on Ministry of Health and Medical Services 2015-2021 Annual Report, the permanent secretary for Ministry of Health and Medical Services Dr Jemesa Tudravu highlighted that they have noticed a trend of HIV cases getting doubled every year.
“It shows the worrying rise in terms of the number of new cases of HIV,” Dr Tudravu said.
“Our first case was in 1989, and since then it’s been single digit until about 10 years later, then it started to be double digits.
“And then around 2018, we started to get them in the hundreds. And if you see from 2021, it was 151, 2022 it’s 245, 2023 it’s 415.
“So, it’s doubling every year. And from our initial estimates this year, it will double again.”
He said they had noted a surge in HIV cases in Fiji.
“We think this is a tip of the iceberg because these are those who have come with symptoms.
“So, they’re showing up because they already very sick. But those who don’t have symptoms, we are not catching them.”
Dr Tudravu said they were working with their partners to tackle the HIV issue in Fiji.
“With the work of our partners, this year, I think for the past five months, we’ve been working on a surge strategy to tackle HIV issue in Fiji.
“We’re hoping to endorse the surge strategy this month.
“It will be tackled on multiple fronts. There is no one solution fix all. And it also be through a multi-agency and a multi-stakeholder engagement that involves both us as well as members of the community.
“It requires a lot of community participation, community engagement. And so, this is captured in our surge strategy for HIV in Fiji.”
He said males with HIV were more than females.
“There is a five-year trend that we’ve captured- in males, the number increased by 390 per cent between 2019 and 2023.
“In females, the number increased by 154 per cent.
“So, something is happening in the male population in Fiji.
“In our surge strategy, we’ll try to look at what are the reasons behind and how are we going to address this issue?”
