Source: UN praises Zim’s HIV roadmap | The Herald
Mukudzei Chingwere
Herald Reporter
Zimbabwe is on track to achieve global targets in the fight against HIV and AIDS, the United Nations (UN) has noted.
UN resident coordinator for Zimbabwe Ms Maria Ribeiro made the remarks when she and World Health Organisation (WHO) representative in Zimbabwe Dr Alex Gasasira paid a courtesy call on Vice President and Minister of Health and Child Care Dr Constantino Chiwenga in Harare yesterday.
Zimbabwe was congratulated by the UN for achieving the 90-90-90 targets with VP Chiwenga saying the country was now seized with achieving the 95-95-95 targets.
This means 90 percent of people living with HIV know their status, 90 percent living with HIV who know their status are on antiretroviral therapy and 90 percent of those on treatment have achieved viral suppression.
“The Vice President mentioned the new goals for HIV and AIDS coming from the new global UN strategy and the political commitments made at the high level summit in June which is basically about achieving 95-95-95 in 2025,” said Ms Ribeiro.
“We are confident that Zimbabwe is on the right track to move in that direction and it demands not only Government, but the whole of society’s effort.
“It is about making sure that nobody is left behind in relation to achieving 95-95-95 and hopefully by 2030, a 100 percent in every area and that means reaching out to perhaps those who are more marginalised.
“We look forward to working with the National Aids Council and the Ministry of Health and Child Care and the Government of Zimbabwe,” said Ms Ribeiro.
VP Chiwenga said there had been a lot of work done for a programme which would soon be launched in 2022 under the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework.
He said this would see a number of programmes being implemented from 2022 to 2026 and consultations for this framework were almost complete.
“These frameworks run parallel with our National Development Strategy 1 which is from 2021 to 2025 and thereafter it will be a second one which will be from 2026 to see our vision from 2030.
“We have sustainable development goals which Zimbabwe is part of and we also looked at that to see what we managed to achieve during this period where we got this pandemic,” said VP Chiwenga.
“People might have forgotten that we are still reeling from this pandemic of HIV/AIDS. It has not disappeared.
“We are still with it and you will be aware that between 8 and 10 June, His Excellency the President attended a high level virtual meeting of the United Nations where he spelt out the achievements Zimbabwe has made in the area of HIV/AIDS.
“We got a congratulatory letter from the United Nations for having achieved a 90-90-90 target and right now we are working on trying to achieve the 95-95-95 and we will be happy if we achieve this by 2025.”
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