Group: 11000 Arizonans living with HIV or AIDS

Speaking at a press briefing held in Abuja to mark the 2015 World AIDS Day, the minister revealed that Nigeria is now treating about 800,000 people living with the virus with antiretroviral drugs.

It says World AIDS Day and the month of December is a great opportunity to educate people about HIV/AIDS and debunk some of the common misconceptions with the viruses.

Improving the reach and efficacy of antiretroviral therapy has been credited with a significant decline in deaths related to AIDS.

Besides, the number of new infections has fallen by 35 percent since the turn of the century.

It said over the last 15 years, scale-up of ART had been most dramatic in the Africa Region where now more than 11 million people are receiving HIV treatment, up from 11 000 at the turn of the century. The county sees about 130 new HIV infections each year, a figure mostly unchanged over the past six years, according to her department.

Dolores Messer who’s a member of Yuma United Church of Christ says, “I know in the past I think people thought of it as a gay disease but it’s not a gay disease”.

“We have to close the tap of new infections”.

The event was hosted by the Frannie Peabody Center and was one of many around the country on World AIDS Day, which started in 1988 to raise awareness.

The theme for this year’s commemoration is: “On the Fast-Track to end AIDS”.

There is no need for people who are HIV negative to get infected as this represents failure of HIV interventions in place to save them, Namibia’s Minister of Health and Social Services Dr Bernard Haufiku, has said. If not, you aren’t alone-which is odd, given that PrEP is now the No. 1 method for preventing HIV transmission, lowering the risk of contraction by a whopping 92 percent.

“I’ll turn 60 next year and I’ve had HIV for 34 years – that doesn’t mean that I’m not dealing with a whole ton of health issues that it’s not just popping a pill a day”.

The organization also distributed more than 6,500 free condoms, which are the best know form of protection against contracting HIV.