Ending HIV/AIDS in Senegal: Reaching the Hardest-to-Reach Groups to Achieve the 2030 Objective

2023-06-21 17:10:45

The HIV situation remains worrying despite the decline in national prevalence. In Senegal, 41,000 people live with HIV, 37,000 know their HIV status and the remaining 4,000 are not identified.

Senegal is part of the dynamics of ending HIV/AIDS by 2030. Indeed, Mame Mor Fall, in charge of programs for the National Alliance of Communities for Health (ANCS), explains that in the perspective of end the epidemic by 2030, no one should be left behind. “There are 2% living with HIV who are not identified; it’s a job that we are doing with these formations because these are people who are hiding,” he says.

Continuing his point, he believes that if the actors who target them are not well trained to have the ability to identify them, the risk of missing out on these groups is real. “The country’s mission is to reach the hardest-to-reach people. The sex workers (Ps) that we used to see in the territories are becoming rarer. They are in the closed apartments, in the telephone networks. If you do not have the useful and necessary connections to be able to penetrate these networks, these are groups that you will leave behind and at the time of the assessment, Senegal risks not achieving the objective of eliminating transmission. of HIV”.