What is already known about this topic?
HIV viral load monitoring is recommended to assess antiretroviral treatment success; however, low- and middle-income countries face financial, operational, and country-specific challenges that must be overcome to adequately scale up viral load monitoring for all HIV-positive persons.
What is added by this report?
Sub-Saharan African countries have overcome challenges to initiate and scale up HIV viral load testing to monitor patients receiving ART. By 2018, seven of eight assessed countries reported viral load suppression rates of ≥85%. Logistical problems remain in several countries.
What are the implications for public health practice?
Viral load testing in low- and middle-income countries enables monitoring of viral load suppression at the individual and population level, which is necessary to achieve global epidemic control.
WFP Tunisia Country Brief, April 2021
Format
In April 2021
WFP launched the “Last Mile Ecosystem” app in the central kitchen of Henchir Jedid, in Nadhour (Zaghouan). This state-of-the-art digital solution ensures that food is purchased locally from small-scale farmers, supporting local agri-food production and economies, while promoting a diverse and nutritious diet for school children.
Operational Updates
• Within the framework of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV (UNAIDS), WFP conducted a food security and nutrition assessment of People Living with HIV (PLHIV). The results show that food insecurity among PLHIV is very high and the nutritional quality of meals is low. More than half of the surveyed households resorted to food of lower quality, reducing the portion size per meal and the number of meals per day. WFP will work with the government and its partners to provide adequate nutritional counselling to PLHIV.
UNAIDS
By Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director; and Tomas Tobé MEP, Chair of the European Parliament’s Development Committee
Forty years since the first cases of AIDS were diagnosed, the fight against HIV goes on. Although the world has developed the scientific knowledge and medical expertise to keep people living with HIV alive and healthy and prevent new HIV infections, we are not on track to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.
In 2019, almost 700,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses. A staggering 1.7 million people were newly infected by HIV – more than three times the target set in 2016, which would have put us on course to end the AIDS epidemic.