Africa-Press – Botswana. Batswana have been urged to ensure that Botswana was well positioned to reach the “last mile” of its HIV/AIDS pandemic response.
Speaking in Gaborone recently, Minister for State President Mr Kabo Morwaeng also encouraged Batswana to continue working hard to ensure achievements made in the war against HIV/AIDS did not decline.
The minister, who was addressing a high level advocacy event on accelerating HIV prevention in Botswana, pointed out that government’s spirited response to HIV over the past two decades had resulted in the achievement of 95 – 98 – 98 against the UN targets.
“These achievements challenge us to shift our gears and strive to know who are the remaining five per cent for those aware of their HIV status, two per cent of enrolment on treatment by those aware of their status and two per cent of viral suppression for those on treatment,” he said.
Mr Morwaeng called for robust strategies to determine how the remaining people could be reached with the necessary messages and services.
He said government supported all efforts towards Zero New Infections, Zero Stigma Discrimination and Zero AIDS related Death, to End AIDS in Botswana.
In the current financial year, 119 civil society organisations were contracted with about P100 million to implement HIV and NCDs prevention activities throughout the country, revealed the minister.
Mr Morwaeng said government planned to reform legislative, policy and programming challenges acting as barriers to achievement of the goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat in Botswana.
He said National AIDS and Health Promotion Agency (NAHPA) in partnership with UNAIDS and other UN agencies, Global Fund and PEPFAR, had started to develop a transition readiness plan for sustainability of HIV prevention and treatment programmes.
On the event’s theme: Accelerating HIV Prevention to end AIDS in Botswana, Mr Morwaeng said the objective was to garner high level leadership for reduction of new infections, achieve national, regional and global targets of epidemic control.
He said the event marked a milestone in Botswana’s HIV response as it was expected to come up with recommendations for re-energising the country’s prevention efforts.
Mr Morwaeng thanked PEPFAR and other United States government agencies such as CDC, USAID and PEACE CORPS, resident United Nations agencies and Global Fund for the technical and financial support extended towards ending AIDS as a public health threat in Botswana by 2030.
For his part, NAHPA official Mr Robert Selato said HIV prevalence was shifting from younger groups to the older generation more of the latter living with the virus.
“Thirty eight per cent of the elderly women have HIV whereas 34 per cent of the elderly men were positive,” said Mr Selato.
Ministry of Health permanent secretary, Ms Grace Muzila called on researchers to identify bottlenecks, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to HIV prevention endeavours.
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