The HIV/AIDs Commission in Yei River County of South Sudan says the number of victims of the disease is increasing, and that the number of recent defaulters from an HIV treatment program is 884.

Joyce Sadia Clement, the commission’s monitoring and evaluation officer, told Eye Radio FM that lack of funds for awareness activities and stigma were harming efforts to prevent and treat the disease.

She pointed to “inadequate HIV awareness due to lack of funds for doing awareness” as a major factor in allowing the spread of HIV. “Most of the HIV partners who are doing awareness and different activities have already phased out in Yei County.”

Joyce added that “stigma and discrimination” is causing people to avoid accessing counseling and anti-retroviral drugs.

Another factor is that many people have recently left their job station in Yei and gone elsewhere: “’Defaulter’ means people who are taking the treatment before and decided not to take now due to their work station for example soldiers, business people.”

“We have 884, so this is what is happening in the county,” she said.

The monitoring officer also disclosed that the number of new clients infected with HIV/AIDs is 48, with more than 2000 clients total.

File photo: Members of the organized forces in a parade for HIV/AIDS Day 2013 (Gurtong)`