HIV/AIDS fight pays dividends
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Monday May 1, 2023 06:00
Therefore, the National AIDS & Health Promotion Agency (NAHPA) in collaboration with UNAIDS, other UN family and the Ministry of Health (MoH) will host an HIV Prevention Symposium 2023 at Majestic Five Hotel in Palapye from May 3-5 to address critical issues.
When addressing the media in Gaborone recently, chief information, education and communication (IEC) and advocacy division officer at NAHPA, Elizabeth Koko said the key objectives of the symposium were to consolidate and intensify high-level leadership and action for combination HIV prevention. The other objectives include review and document successes, challenges, lessons learnt and best practices in the implementation of the five pillars of combination HIV prevention.
There were also recommendations with commitment for efficient delivery of evidence informed high impact services and sustainable financing of combination HIV prevention. Koko further explained that Botswana has exceeded UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets, which call for 95% of all people living with HIV to be aware of their status, 95% of those who are aware of their status to be on anti-retroviral treatment (ART), and 95% of those on ART to achieve viral load suppression. On a positive note, she said Botswana was currently at 95-98-98, which was very impressive for a country.
Those results show tremendous progress towards achieving control of the HIV epidemic and demonstrate the extraordinary impact of the national HIV response. She pointed out that there were still new infections amongst the youth where HIV prevalence was high amongst young women and adolescent girls. She, therefore, explained that there was great need for the government to invest in primary prevention methods. Koko disclosed that they had to find ways to reach out to the youth since they no longer go to kgotla meetings but are always available on various social media platforms. She also said peer education was vital in the fight against new infections and HIV as young people could easily relate to their peers.
“After the symposium, we are going to intensity our IEC programmes targeting young women and adolescent girls. It is through the same symposium where we will be able to talk to community leaders, civil society organisations (CSOs) and peer educators. In the previous symposium that was held on March we met with policy makers. We will make a roadmap that will be taking us to 2025.
It will be data driven, position prevention and inclusive of key populations. Technology is also important as it deals with volunteer safe male circumcision, manufacturing of condoms and ARV medicines,” she said. For his part, UNAIDS fast track advisor, Dr Chiweni Chimbwete said although Botswana celebrates achieving HIV prevention goals and being on the path to elimination, it was important for the country to also focus on fighting against re-infections more especially amongst young people and losing people through HIV related deaths and others.
“Our goal is to stop HIV by cleaning it with treatment. We had number of processes of self-reflection. We need prevention self-assessment tools we can use to access, question ourselves on a way forward. Since adolescent girls and young women contribute to high numbers of HIV it is high time we come up with action plans to see that that situation is addressed. We need roadmaps that will take us to 2025,” he said. He further said they will be discussing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), that he pointed out to be very important to people at risk like adolescent girls and young women together with key populations like the sex workers and others.
He explained that PrEP was available at specialised clinic countrywide. Furthermore, he pointed out that female sex workers’ HIV prevalence was high at 46%. He added that it was important to reflect on that issue saying the biggest question that needed to be addressed what who are their clients stating that it was men. He added that it was time to stop stigma against people living with HIV. He however pointed out that sometimes people living with HIV had self-stigma and blamed themselves for having the virus.