Zim surpasses HIV fight targets

Zim Now Writer

Zimbabwe has surpassed the 95-95-95 United Nations Programme on HIV and Aids (UNAIDS) prevention targets before the 2025 deadline, becoming the second Southern African country after Botswana to surpass the targets.

Set by UNAIDS in 2020, the objective of the target is to ensure that 95 percent of all people living with HIV know their status, 95 percent of all people diagnosed with HIV have access to sustained anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and 95 percent of all people on ART achieve viral suppression by 2025.

According to the National Aids Council (NAC), 96 percent of all people living with HIV know their status, 97 percent of those diagnosed with HIV are on ART, and 95 percent are virally suppressed.

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NAC chief executive officer Dr Bernard Madzima credited the achievements to robust domestic funding and the ability to build confidence among partners to invest in HIV programmes.

“The huge milestone is attributable to the fact that the HIV programme is very strong and has received support from the highest level. We have strong partnerships with the Global Fund, USAID, PEPFAR and other multilateral and bilateral organisations. So, the HIV programmes have received financial, technical and moral support from these partners,” he said.

Dr Madzima acknowledged that the global Covid-19 pandemic impacted negatively on the country’s capacity to achieve even better statistics.

Ministry of Health and Child Care national ART coordinator Dr Chiedza Mupanduki also said Zimbabwe had made significant progress saying out of 1,3 million people living with HIV, over 1,2 million of them are on treatment. “We have managed to decentralise ART centres from only seven in 2004, when we started giving out anti-retroviral drugs, to more than 1 700 health facilities currently,” she said.

Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association president Dr Johannes Marisa said achieving this milestone was a result of vigorous campaigns and uninterrupted supply of ART by government and its partners.

“We have never had cases of shortage of medication in all health facilities,” he said.

In 2020, Zimbabwe had the sixth-highest HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa, with 1,3 million people aged between 15 and 64 years living with HIV.

Only last month, Zimbabwe became the first African country to approve the use of the long-acting injectable cabotegravir as pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV prevention.