HIV/AIDS in the DRC: Behind the progress, huge challenges remain - Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International

In 2002, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams opened the first outpatient treatment centre offering free care to people living with HIV in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Twenty years later, while great progress has been achieved in the country, major gaps remain in testing and treatment, causing thousands of preventable deaths each year. 

When the doors of our treatment centre opened in May 2002, the situation was critical: more than one million men, women and children were living with HIV in the DRC, but antiretroviral (ARV) treatment was scarce and unaffordable in the country.  By the early 2000s, the virus was killing between 50,000 and 200,000 people each year in the DRC, according to UNAIDShttps://data.unaids.org/pub/report/2002/brglobal_aids_report_en_pdf_red_en.pdf.

"For many, being infected with HIV was just a death sentence," says Dr Maria Mashako, MSF's medical coordinator in the DRC.

"The cost of antiretroviral treatment made it just inaccessible to most patients. Even MSF, in the early months of the centre, did not have ARVs. Our team could only treat symptoms and opportunistic infections. It was very hard."

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