Botswana Hits Historic Goal Against HIV

Botswana has become the second nation in the world, after Eswatini, to reach a landmark goal towards eradicating AIDS, in what health experts hailed as “stellar results”.

The country has met the so-called “95-95-95” target on HIV diagnosis, treatment and viral suppression several years early, according to a study published ahead of a global conference on HIV/AIDS

About one in five people in Botswana live with the virus — one of the highest rates in the world — according to the UN AIDS agency. The goal was for 95 per cent of HIV-positive people to know their status, 95 per cent of those diagnosed on medication and 95 per cent of those under treatment to show signs that the virus is being suppressed in their blood by 2025.

But the study led by Botswana’s health ministry found the country had already met or surpassed all three thresholds, with a 95-98-98 score. The global average in 2020 was 84-87-90, UNAIDS says.

“Botswana is making historic new progress against HIV,” Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International AIDS Society (IAS), told a virtual press briefing presenting the results.

The country is “well positioned to end its HIV epidemic by 2030. To put it simply, these are really stellar results.”

Madisa Mine, the study’s lead author and a Botswana government virologist, said the results were encouraging.

“We have translated a hopeless situation into a situation where now there is hope,” he said.

Now both the government and people on medication could look forward to Botswana one day becoming an AIDS-free country, Mine added.

That was a far cry from when he started working on the disease two decades ago, and it seemed the nation was “facing extinction” due to the high number of infections.