HIV prevalence rising in older adults; prevention strategies focus youth: Study

Older adults are increasingly acquiring HIV, but are underrepresented in prevention and treatment campaigns, which is more focused on youth, according to a study.

The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, showed that the prevalence of HIV in older adults is exceeding that of younger adults. However, prevention and treatment campaigns are not adequately targeting the particular needs of the 50+ year age group, said researchers from Wits University in South Africa who investigated HIV in older people in Kenya and South Africa.

“We often think of HIV as a disease of younger people. It doesn`t help that intervention campaigns are mainly targeted at the youth,” said Dr. Luicer Olubayo, a researcher at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB) at Wits.

Moreover, the study showed that older adults are less likely to believe that they can get HIV.

This misconception is pervasive and has consequences for reaching global targets to achieve UNAIDS` 95-95-95 targets by 2030 (95 per cent of people living with HIV know their status, 95 per cent of people who know their status are on treatment, and 95 per cent have a suppressed viral load).

“While HIV prevalence among individuals over 50 years of age is similar to or even exceeds that of younger adults, HIV surveys focus on younger individuals, leaving considerable gaps in understanding HIV prevalence, incidence, and treatment outcomes in older populations,” said F. Xavier Gomez-Olive, Associate Professor at the MRC/Wits-Agincourt Research Unit.

Further, the uptake of HIV testing among older adults is poor, which delays diagnosis and limits access to care.

This is, indeed, one of the signifiers of the pervasiveness of the stigma surrounding the disease, said the team stressing the need to boost interventions to support older people`s mental health and overall well-being.

Interventions could focus on repeated testing, the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and campaigns to increase awareness and reduce infections among the elderly.

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