Praneeta Prakash 
There is a need for everyone to take shared responsibility to address HIV crisis and avert any new infection says UN Aids Country Director Renata Ram.
She made the comments in light of the increasing number of new HIV infections in the last 13 years.
According to UNAIDS, Fiji has seen a 129 percent increase in new infections and a 173 percent increase in HIV-related deaths since 2010.
Ram says Fiji, which once led the Pacific Region with robust HIV programming, has now become the country with the second-fastest-growing epidemic in the Asia-Pacific region.
She adds that political and public focus has shifted from HIV and AIDS, reversing many gains of the early response.
“One of this is change in priorities, shifting priorities, as I said earlier, Fiji was doing really well plus during this time period NCD’s became an issue, climate change because an issue and there has been a lot of pressure to address all these emerging issues and HIV got pushed back a bit and with anything that loses it priority can sometimes become an problem.”
Ram says if the issue is not addressed, there will be serious implications.
“We need to go back to talking about it that’s the only thing and not just from the Health Ministry or the Health sector it has to come from schools, from home, from church, from many other areas because sexual health is a very taboo subject as well and we need to recognize that sexual health is a part of health and we need to normalize these conversations.”
Meanwhile, Reproductive and Family Health Association of Fiji is also conducting various awareness sessions in light of the increasing number of cases.
