Tlou retires from UNAIDS
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Friday May 12, 2017 12:15
In an interview with Mmegi, Tlou said she will be retiring from the position she has held since 2010. Tlou is responsible for 21 countries, from Eritrea to South Africa, including the Indian Ocean Islands of The Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles.
“I have been working for UNAIDS for seven years. My retirement does not mean that I am totally leaving the nursing profession. I have a couple of projects in the pipeline. As long as HIV and AIDS are still here I am not going to leave this profession.
I will be focussing on a different angle of human resources for health, and the recruitment and training of community health workers. So I will still be involved in the AIDS response,” she said.
Tlou explained that since she worked for UNAIDS, she has observed that all countries were committed to the AIDS response.
However, she pointed out that the major challenge she experienced was that the world economic situation did not augur well for the spirit of Shared Responsibility and Global Solidarity in ending AIDS.
She said as a result many countries did not increase their domestic spending on the AIDS response due to competing priorities and relied mainly on the Global Fund and other donors, a situation that is not sustainable in the long run.
“Botswana, Namibia and South Africa are the only countries that fund their AIDS response by more than 60%. Key populations are often marginalised due to legal barriers to access services or because of stigma and discrimination, and do not receive adequate attention from national programmes.
“Serious challenges remain on the issues of decriminalising same-sex sexual relations and sex work; in implementing harm-reduction programmes and recognising the rights and entitlements of people who inject drugs and in improving legal and other mechanisms to protect men and women from sexual and physical violence and abuse arising from their perceived or actual sexual orientation or gender identities. Unless these are addressed, we will not end AIDS by 2030,” she noted.
Despite these challenges, Tlou said she attained a number of achievements which she could look back and be proud of. She said under her leadership, supervision and guidance of UCO and RST staff, the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region has made great progress in the AIDS response, between 2010 and 2015.
Some of her achevements include new infections having gone down by 14%, which she described as the highest achievement of any region. She said 90% of the HIV positive pregnant women access PMTCT services, doubling the percentage from 2010.
“Some of my achievements include: new infections among children dropping by 66%, to an estimated 56,000, thus the region is on track to reach the 2020 target of 9 400. About five countries in ESA are looking into pre-validation of the Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission (EMTCT); of the 19 million people living with HIV in ESA, more than half (58 percent) are on life-saving antiretroviral therapy, up from 24% in 2010.
This accounts for more than two-thirds of the global number of people on ART and in order to improve access and to ensure that more people in the ESA region know their HIV status (for 90-90-90), six countries have moved to the Universal Test and Treat or Treat All model, and it is being well sustained and augmented by home and community testing services being piloted in the countries,” she said.