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Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges

To date, about 37 million people are living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and an estimated 680,000 people have died from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) related illnesses globally. While all countries have been impacted by HIV, some have been significantly more impacted than...

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Autores principales: Armstrong-Mensah, Elizabeth Afibah, Tetteh, Ato Kwamena, Ofori, Emmanuel, Ekhosuehi, Osasogie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9179955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35682181
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116597
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author Armstrong-Mensah, Elizabeth Afibah
Tetteh, Ato Kwamena
Ofori, Emmanuel
Ekhosuehi, Osasogie
author_facet Armstrong-Mensah, Elizabeth Afibah
Tetteh, Ato Kwamena
Ofori, Emmanuel
Ekhosuehi, Osasogie
author_sort Armstrong-Mensah, Elizabeth Afibah
collection PubMed
description To date, about 37 million people are living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and an estimated 680,000 people have died from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) related illnesses globally. While all countries have been impacted by HIV, some have been significantly more impacted than others, particularly countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this paper was to identify progress made in HIV prevention globally, particularly in the areas of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) uptake, access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), and HIV-related stigma. With the development of ART, a cocktail of medications for the treatment of HIV, VCT uptake increased, as it became apparent that the medication would only be prescribed after an HIV diagnosis through testing. Widely considered a critical gateway to HIV prevention and treatment, VCT is being implemented in many countries, and as a result, about 38 million people living with HIV in 2018 had access to ART. Regardless of this success, major challenges still remain. We did an electronic search of 135 articles in English related to global HIV progress and challenges indexed in PubMed, ResearchGate, Google, and other search engines from 1998 to 2021. Sixty articles met the inclusion criteria for this paper. Data on trends in ART coverage were obtained from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) website. These data were used to show ART coverage globally in World Health Organization (WHO) regions. It was found that while global successes have been chalked in the areas of VCT uptake and ART coverage, HIV-related stigma has impeded greater success. This paper summarizes and discusses global successes and challenges in HIV prevention efforts in the past four decades with a focus on VCT, ART, and HIV-related stigma.
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spelling pubmed-91799552022-06-10 Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges Armstrong-Mensah, Elizabeth Afibah Tetteh, Ato Kwamena Ofori, Emmanuel Ekhosuehi, Osasogie Int J Environ Res Public Health Review To date, about 37 million people are living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and an estimated 680,000 people have died from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) related illnesses globally. While all countries have been impacted by HIV, some have been significantly more impacted than others, particularly countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this paper was to identify progress made in HIV prevention globally, particularly in the areas of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) uptake, access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), and HIV-related stigma. With the development of ART, a cocktail of medications for the treatment of HIV, VCT uptake increased, as it became apparent that the medication would only be prescribed after an HIV diagnosis through testing. Widely considered a critical gateway to HIV prevention and treatment, VCT is being implemented in many countries, and as a result, about 38 million people living with HIV in 2018 had access to ART. Regardless of this success, major challenges still remain. We did an electronic search of 135 articles in English related to global HIV progress and challenges indexed in PubMed, ResearchGate, Google, and other search engines from 1998 to 2021. Sixty articles met the inclusion criteria for this paper. Data on trends in ART coverage were obtained from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) website. These data were used to show ART coverage globally in World Health Organization (WHO) regions. It was found that while global successes have been chalked in the areas of VCT uptake and ART coverage, HIV-related stigma has impeded greater success. This paper summarizes and discusses global successes and challenges in HIV prevention efforts in the past four decades with a focus on VCT, ART, and HIV-related stigma. MDPI 2022-05-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9179955/ /pubmed/35682181 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116597 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Armstrong-Mensah, Elizabeth Afibah
Tetteh, Ato Kwamena
Ofori, Emmanuel
Ekhosuehi, Osasogie
Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges
title Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges
title_full Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges
title_fullStr Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges
title_full_unstemmed Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges
title_short Voluntary Counseling and Testing, Antiretroviral Therapy Access, and HIV-Related Stigma: Global Progress and Challenges
title_sort voluntary counseling and testing, antiretroviral therapy access, and hiv-related stigma: global progress and challenges
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9179955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35682181
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116597
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