MPILO Central Hospital clinical director Solwayo Ngwenya has cautioned people living with HIV against defaulting on antiretroviral treatment (ARVs) saying the drugs are the only way to guarantee treatment success.
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) involves taking a combination of HIV medicines daily.
ART is not a cure for HIV, but it helps people living with the chronic disease to live longer and healthier lives.
HIV treatment initiatives have focused on increasing access to ART.
Ngwenya said dangers of defaulting on ARVs include developing severe life-threatening opportunistic infections such as meningitis, tuberculosis and cryptosporidium diarrhoea.
“Once they default, they come back to the pre-ARV period where we lost a lot of people due to opportunistic infections,” Ngwenya told Southern Eye on Sunday.
“So defaulting treatment is extremely dangerous and can bring sudden hold to someone's life.
“There is continuous damage to vital organs, because you are no longer taking ARVs, you have advanced HIV disease and you increase your likelihood of dying.”
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HIV and Aids remain a challenge in Zimbabwe with a prevalence of 11.58%, translating into an estimated 1.3 million people living with HIV in 2021.
There are approximately 31,000 new HIV cases in the country annually, and adolescent girls and young women are disproportionately affected, with an incidence of 0.54% (compared to 0.20% among young men).
According to statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO), at the end of 2022, 29.8 million of the 39 million people living with HIV were on ART.
Ngwenya said ART remains the only route towards HIV management.
“Defaulting on ART therefore continuously prolongs our problems with the HIV fight,” Ngwenya said.
“There is also a possibility of developing drug resistance when you try to come back onto the ARVs later on.
“When you come back very sick, the ARVs will not be able to help you.”
Ngwenya said people were defaulting on ART mainly on traditional and religious beliefs as well as ignorance.
“Government has to make sure that there are enough stocks of ARVs,” he said.
In a bid to reduce the HIV prevalence rate, Zimbabwe became the first country to approve the use of the vaginal ring, in July 2021, alongside Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.
The WHO recommends the ring as an additional prevention option for women at substantial risk of contracting HIV.
