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Tendai Rupapa in ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Zimbabwe is among countries leading in HIV prevention and control despite facing economic challenges due to sanctions, an official has said.
Speaking on the sidelines of an Organisation of African First Ladies (OAFLAD) technical advisory team meeting underway here, the National AIDS Council (NAC) communications director and technical advisor in the Office of First Lady Amai Auxillia Mnangagwa, Mrs Madeleine Dube, said the country was receiving more support from development partners because of the way Amai Mnangagwa conducts her business.
Amai Mnangagwa is also the OAFLAD vice president, a position she got in recognition of her hard work.
This year’s theme for OAFLAD is “Gender Equality and Women Empowerment: A Pathway to the Africa We Want” and it dovetails with work already being done by Amai Mnangagwa to ensure women contribute meaningfully to the country’s economic development.
The OAFLAD meeting is being held on the sidelines of the African Union (AU) summit.
The First Lady has rolled out women empowerment projects across Zimbabwe. As a way of empowering women, she recently took a team of women in business to China where they met and shared notes with their counterparts on how best they can improve their businesses and contribute to the country’s economic development.
“It was motivating to see that most partners shared what they were doing with the Offices of First Ladies. One of the issues discussed is to do with HIV and Aids, the Free to Shine Campaign. Amai Mnangagwa has already launched this campaign and she is running with it.
“We have already received more support from development partners because of the excellent way she has launched this campaign so that we continue communicating the Free to Shine campaign to our communities, especially encouraging mothers who are living positively with the virus to continue to be on treatment and to ensure that their children are on treatment as well. It’s very encouraging that in Zimbabwe, despite all the challenges we have, we have a very proactive First Lady,” said Mrs Dube.
Dr Bernard Madzima from the Ministry of Health and Child Care paid tribute to Amai Mnangagwa for her charity work.
“We have partners who have come to engage OAFLAD as an organisation, but it is interesting to note that for Zimbabwe, organisations like Merck Foundation and UNAIDS have already been working with Amai. This is good because I would say that we are already ahead in terms of engagement with them as partners.
“As you know, OAFLAD is engaged in activities which promote health and social well-being. So we are taking stock of the work which has happened in 2019, basically looking at the budgets, looking at the activities, whether we have met our targets or not, especially in programmes of HIV and Aids prevention and control. But we are also looking at other areas like non-communicable diseases, issues of nutrition and poverty. So the First Ladies and technical teams have come here to take stock and plan for 2020,” he said. On non-communicable diseases, Amai Mnangagwa, who is also the country’s health ambassador, has been holding free cancer-screening programmes for both men and women to allow for early diagnosis and early treatment.
Dr Madzima said during the meeting, partners made presentations on how best they can work with the Africa First Ladies.
“Today (yesterday) we have potential partners in the name of Global Alliance for Vaccines. We also had Merck Foundation and UNAIDS. So all these organisations are pitching to work with the First Ladies. There is also the rollback malaria, which is working in all countries in Africa. So the meeting is a technical meeting which then informs their Excellencies across Africa when they meet in their steering committee and in the general assembly over the weekend.”
Back home, the First Lady, through her Angel of Hope Foundation, has rolled out a number of programmes to uplift people’s lives.
She was voted OAFLAD vice president because of her hard work which has brought a new lease of life to previously marginalised communities.
Online Reporter