A woman at Mt Hagen Hospital is told by a nurse (left) in 2004 that she has HIV. A few years ago, PNG was lauded for its efforts to contain the virus, but infection rates are now rising. Photo: AFP
The executive director of the civil society group, Businesses for Health (B4H), Ann Clarke says that in 2022 PNG recorded its highest ever number of new HIV infections in a single year.
Clarke told RNZ Pacific that the country, which already has ten of thousands of people living with the virus after rampant spreading at the beginning of this century, recorded 6,500 new infections in 2022.
She said the catalyst for the HIV surge has been the Covid-19 pandemic but there had been a significant decline in services to keep the virus in check since 2014.
"When things really fall off, really derail like it did with Covid, you see that exponential rate of change for the last two years, which as you saw, 91 percent increase in new infections from 2020 to 2022," she said.
B4H works directly with businesses to help them ensure their workforces stay healthy.
It has done a lot of work on both tuberculosis and HIV, which are closely linked, because TB is such a whole of health issue.
B4H is working to re-establish World AIDS Day on 1 December each year as a focal point for the country.
"In the early 2000s, when we thought we were having an absolutely catastrophic crisis, which we were, because back in the late 90s early 2000s there was no treatment for people here in Papua New Guinea," Clarke said.
She said the advent of treatment changed the profile and of the more than 70,000 people currently living with HIV, about 50,000 are on antiretroviral therapy (ART) medication.
Clarke said they want all those with the virus to know their status, to access treatment, and this is where B4H's plan for a re-invigoration of World AIDS Day comes from.
"To make sure that the need for all young people in every single workplace whether they get a new partner, they are getting married or they are planning a family, to make sure they know their HIV status, because that is just such a simple, life long, health habit to prevent the infection of another person."
Clarke said when they go into businesses to talk about HIV, most people were incredibly grateful for the education and the inspiration to engage people in "wide open conversation about difficult subjects, which is, of course, sex, sex, sex and more sex and that something like condoms are such an easy, accessible, affordable device for preventing the spread of STIs and HIV."
She added though some people do feel very uncomfortable.
