In the last 20 years, Mozambique has managed to reduce the deaths of at least one million people from HIV/AIDS.

The information was shared by the executive secretary of the National Council for Combating HIV/AIDS (CNCS), Francisco Mbofana, this Monday (19) in Maputo, during the opening of the institution's Coordinating Council, an event led by the Prime Minister, Adriano Maleiane.

According to Mbofana, thanks to the CNCS' interventions it has been possible to prevent around 900,000 new infections between 2000 and 2022. Between 2010 and 2022, there will be a 41 percent reduction in the number of new infections.

For the source, quoted by AIM, the success is also due to the interventions of the government, cooperation partners, civil society, among others, who helped spread messages and mobilize funds for the purchase of antiretrovirals to boost the immunity of those infected.

"As far as deaths are concerned, we have also made progress, albeit slow, and we can only see that from 2010 to 2022 we have seen a 36 percent reduction in deaths and the number of deaths avoided between 2000/2022 is around one million," said Mbofana.

According to the official, by 2022, estimates indicated that more than 2.4 million HIV-positive people were living in Mozambique and during the period in question, the country recorded around 97,000 new infections and 48,000 deaths associated with HIV/AIDS.

According to the source, Zambezia province continues to register the most worrying levels due to the considerable increase in prevalence, with the province registering around 26,000 infections in 2022 alone.

"All the provinces are worrying because according to the survey carried out in 2021 it shows that all the provinces have sero-prevalence, above five percent," explained Mbofana.

"In Zambezia province there has been a considerable increase in terms of prevalence and this increase in prevalence is due to the fact that it is a province that has seen a greater number of new infections," he added.

Regarding the reduction of vertical transmission, from mother to child, Mbofana stressed that there are still some challenges to achieving the target.

"This is a very important indicator because it measures what we have been achieving. To say that we haven't yet reached the target we want is five percent," he noted.