45% Ghanaians don’t know their HIV Status

New data from the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC) indicates that 55.3 per cent of the Ghanaian population is aware of their HIV status.

Out of this percentage, 184,955 people living with the virus know their status, while 113,000 of the people living with HIV who know their status are on ART treatment.

Acting Director-General, GAC, Mr. Kyeremeh Atuahene, briefing journalists on the 2018 National HIV estimates and projections in Accra, said this is the first time the commission has calculated data on the country’s 90-90-90 targets.

“We are happy to announce that 55.3 percent of Ghanaians have been diagnosed and they know their status and of this proportion, 61 percent are on antiretroviral treatment and of the 61 percent on treatment 66.4 percent is virally suppressed,” he disclosed.

He said the figure represents the position of the country in its HIV fight adding, “We have got to do more to achieve the 90-90-90 targets.”

Mr. Atuahene admitted the country’s inability to meet the 90-90-90 HIV targets of 90 percent of population knowing their status, 90 percent of those who are HIV positive getting ART treatment and 90 percent of those on ART treatment having viral suppression.

“We accept that by the end of 2020, we may not have reached the targets but we have put in place the necessary interventions and programmes to ensure that we achieve the 90-90-90 targets shortly after 2020,” he added.

National Prevalence

Presenting the national figures, Mr. Atuahene said close to 20,000 people living in Ghana got infected with HIV in 2018.

He said with regard to the majority of the new infections, 16,614, occurred between those aged 15 and 49 years, accounting for 83 percent of the new infection.

Children below one year to 14 also recorded new infections of 3,317, representing 17 percent of the total figure.

However, the data shows high incidence of new HIV infection among female youth (4,382) as compared to 1,175 for new infections among male youth.

Mr. Atuahene said 14,181 HIV related deaths were recorded in the year under review.

Again, HIV deaths among adults were the highest with 11,412, with deaths related to HIV among children being 2,769.

“Estimated National HIV Prevalence between (15-49 years) is 1.69 percent,” he said.

The total number of people living with HIV for all ages is 334,714. Out of the number of people living with HIV, 350,200 are adults while 29,514 are children.