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Ivan Zhakata-Herald Correspondent
ZIMBABWE is on track to achieve the 2030 target of zero new infections of HIV, deputy director of HIV/STIs in the Ministry of Health and Child Care Dr Tsitsi Apollo said yesterday at the mid-term review of the National Aids Strategic Plan.
“I am glad with the strides the country has made in responding to HIV and AIDS,” she said.
“Zimbabwe has been implementing the national AIDS strategic plan from 2021 to 2025 and this is a five-year strategic plan.
“Zimbabwe has very robust strategic plans and compared to other countries we have very good guidelines, frameworks and strategic plans, but many issues are on implementation. That is where we lack. This is a very important process that we are going through so there is a need to put an end to AIDS in 2030.”
Dr Apollo said as a country, Zimbabweans had clearly shown that they were geared towards ending AIDS by 2030.
“Across different populations, we want to reduce new infection among adults, adolescents and young people by 18 percent by 2025,” she said.
“We would like to also reduce AIDS-related mortality by 80 percent by 2025 and to eliminate HIV stigma and discrimination. We note that for the past two to three years, our strategy was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic so many of our interventions were affected and we could not go out to execute our interventions. There had been an acceleration of programmes to catch up.”
UNAIDS country representative Mrs Sophia Mukti said there was need to put people at the centre to end new HIV infection by 2030.
“Let us take note of the achievement that we have realised so far,” she said.
“We should align our targets to the global strategy to reduce and end the inequalities as well as to put people at the centre to end AIDS by 2030.”
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