Situation Analysis of HIV/AIDS in Malawi
Great strides continue to be made regarding the battle towards reducing HIV prevalence rate and AIDS related deaths in Malawi. Latest statistics provided by the Ministry of Health indicate that Malawi has reduced new infections by about 40% (from 59,000 in 2010 to 33,000 in 2017) with 980,000 people living with HIV currently accessing the antiretroviral drugs. The national prevalence rate has also been reduced from 10% to 8.9%. Malawi is also making tremendous progress towards the 90-90-90 targets1. Regarding the HIV situation in Malawi now, there is a new development with the introduction of the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets, which was not implemented when the previous strategic plan was being formulated. The revision therefore comes in handy to take care of the new scenario.
Malawi has also produced guidelines that support provision of ART as early as possible like the "Test and Treat" strategy which provides ARVs to all PLHIV regardless of their CD4 count status once they are diagnosed with HIV. Apart from the treatment success, Malawi has also adopted other strategies to scale up prevention, like the provision of condom and other interventions targeting adolescent girls and young women.
1 UNAIDS 2017 Report.