Did we foresee this?

While the world is seeing breakthroughs in HIV prevention and treatment with many countries celebrating a decline in new HIV cases, the Philippines is going the opposite side.

The total reported cases in the past 30 years is still a tiny proportion (less than 1%) of the entire population, and the 102 million Filipinos can’t feel it.

But HIV in the country is now fast and furious. A young, exploding epidemic.

In our crude estimates, a whooping 35,000+ new infections will be recorded by end of 2016, the end of the 6-year Aquino administration, eclipsing by eight-fold the total infections recorded in the first 25 years of HIV in the country (4,500 total cases from 1984 to 2009).

With business as usual - low investments in AIDS, less aggressive political pronouncements about HIV response, weakening AIDS activism – projections on the number of new cases will further balloon to 130,000+ by end of the next administration in 2022. Convert that to Philhealth coverage of P30,000 per year on ARV and laboratory needs, this country will be spending P4 billion a year for treatment alone. Hey, there will be opportunistic infections, right? Primarily tuberculosis and pneumonia, and these will be covered separately from a different Philhealth package, probably by the hundreds of millions.

O yes, the country saw this in a crystal ball. Those in the know warned those we thought could be warned.

Equipped with new data, scientific tools, and clear messages which all point out to an expanding epidemic by 2015, a series of multi-level consultations, program evaluation for effectiveness, endless strategizing and planning were done.

In fairness, the country produced a clear national strategy to address the disease and was armed with a system and tools to ensure progress towards achieving the national targets are monitored and evaluated.

We had the 2005-2010 Philippine AIDS Medium Term Plan (4^th AMTP printed in 2007) and the 2011-2016 Philippine AIDS Medium Term Plan (5^th AMTP) with clear, ambitious targets needing at least P2 billion a year mostly for HIV prevention.

NEXT - Where did we fail?

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HIV Around me  |  AIDS Work  |  Did we forsesee this?  |  Where did we fail?  |  The legendary AIDS Law  |  No Cases. Where did it go?  |  Confused  |  Wildfire  |  We will bounce back  |  Papang, thank you, I know my HIV status 

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