Author: HILDA MHAGAMA
AfricaPress-Tanzania: MORE than 18,800 community caseworkers have been trained in the past six years to link vulnerable children and their families to HIV/Aids testing and treatment.
Speaking on the achievements and next steps for health system strengthening in Tanzania, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director to Tanzania Andrew Karas said John Snow Inc (JSI) through Community Health and Social Welfare Systems Strengthening Programme (CHSSP) bolstered the skills of communities to identify risky populations, get them tested, link them to care and retain them on treatment.
“A six-year $36m activity that ends this year for Tanzania has built the capacity of 49 local civil society organisations and revitalised thousands of local government community structures across the country,” he said during a virtual closeout conference in Dar es Salaam.
Because of such interventions, he said, the activity reached over 1 million individuals in 106 councils of Tanzania to receive HIV/Aids testing of which 90 per cent who tested positive were put on HIV/Aids treatment.
Over 700,000 vulnerable children and their families were linked to lifesaving health and social welfare services.
Mr Karas further said those were tangible results that directly contributed to the 90-90-90 targets to diagnose 90 per cent of all persons living with HIV/Aids, provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) for 90 per cent of those diagnosed and achieve viral suppression for 90 per cent of those treated by the end of 2020.
