PNG health experts say HIV infections rising in children
Updated
An agency working with HIV-positive children in Papua New Guinea says it is seeing a worrying rise in the number of infections. PNG already has the largest burden of HIV / AIDS cases in the Pacific, and the country's main source of funding for anti-retroviral drugs has just dried up. It is bad news for the government, which is trying to keep a promise to halt the spread of the epidemic within five years.
Presenter: Liam Fox, PNG correspondent
Speaker: Friends Foundation founder and director Tessie Soi; Sir Peter Barter, Chairman of PNG's National AIDS Council
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FOX: Every week young women come to the Friends Foundation in Port Moresby to eat a free lunch and to collect milk formula for their children. They're all HIV-positive and so are their young ones. But most, like this 24 year old who wishes to remain anonymous, are yet to tell their families because of the stigma that still surrounds the disease.
WOMAN: Because they hate ... these AIDS people, but not knowing that I am one of them you can hear about it. They might hate me or I do not know.
FOX: She says her little boy is a miracle baby and cries while telling how he's been close to death several times in his short life.
WOMAN: He couldn't eat, he was very skinny, he lost a lot of weight, bones were sticking out of him.
FOX: As well as providing food, formula and counselling the Friends Foundation cares for four HIV-positive orphans.
Its founder and director Tessie Soi says last year they helped 50 kids and their parents. This year the demand on their services has more than tripled.
SOI: With the numbers that I'm seeing at 150 like 11, 12 months. I am very worried about that figure.
FOX: Ms Soi says there's no clear explanation for the increase. But she suspects husbands are cheating on their wives post-pregnancy, getting infected and then infecting their wives who then pass the disease onto their babies.
SOI: If the father decides to have an affair, that's when the virus can be brought in. If she is breastfeeding, we know the virus is in breast milk.
FOX: In PNG around 10,000 people receive subsidised anti-retroviral therapy or ART - drugs that suppress the disease and allow them to live longer. But the major source of funding for the expensive drugs has dried up after the Global Fund rejected PNG's application for more money in its latest round of funding. Sir Peter Barter is the Chairman of the National AIDS Council and says PNG only has itself to blame for the funding knock back.
BARTER: In round four funding, there is a number a lot of money given to Papua New Guinea, and the implementation of those projects was not as what you would describe as the best in the interest of the people, if you have people living with HIV. We were very slow in implementing certain projects, for instance, it took several years to really get people under treatment.
FOX: Sir Peter says an alternative source of funding needs to be found quickly as there's only enough ART in the country to meet current demands until March next year.
BARTER: If we did run out of treatment and there would be a resistance build up against the current treatment, which means you would have to be in a more expensive treatment or alternative those people who just die a lot quicker.
Tessie Soi from the Friends Foundation says running out of ART would be disastrous.
SOI: It costs us $1800 a month just for the ART. Who can afford that? Which Papua New Guinea can afford that on the salary they are getting. What will happen is we are going to get an influx of children being positive, because now their mum's not on ART, there is no treatment. Not only that, the mums don't really live longer. We're going to have a lot of orphans.
