World AIDS Day was observed on December 1st under the theme ‘Take The Right Path:  My Health, My Right’.

ZNS News spoke with Director of the National HIV/AIDS Programme, Dr. Nikkiah Forbes of the sidelines of an event held commemorating World AIDs Day.  She revealed that at the end of 2023 there was 4,098 people living with HIV and AIDS in The Bahamas.  “So we know that 1% of the population is living with HIV and that has actually been a decline in recent years.  And so when we look at the trends of new infections we had 130 new infections in the year 2023 and that was a 63% decline in the past ten years.  AIDS deaths are also down.  We saw 48% decline in AIDS death in the past ten years but we do still have work do to in the first against HIV and AIDS.  We have global targets so called the 95-95-95 targets where we aim to have 95% of persons knowing their status, 95% of those persons on medication and 95% of those having the golds standard of viral suppression which means there is no copies of HIV detected in a blood sample.”

The AID Programme Director said the government has committed to free medication from earlier on in the HIV fight.  “With the role out of these medications in the early 90s we started to see a sharp decline in HIV but its also the efforts of, for example, the team at the center to raise awareness, to do testing so there’s many ways that people can keep themselves safe from HIV including knowing their status, getting tested, safe sex, condoms and lubricants.  We have a lot of ways to prevent HIV now including medications, the HIV prevention pill, Prep 1 pill, once a day for those that are HIV negative most at risk for HIV can keep persons HIV negative for example, so those are some of the things.”

Approximately 37.7 million people are living with HIV worldwide.