By Felix Matasva
The National Aids Council (NAC) of Zimbabwe says in light of declining donor HIV AIDS funding there was need to mobilize local resources for a sustainable response to the endemic disease.
Speaking during a Family Aids Caring Trust (FACT) Zimbabwe’s 2024-2026 Strategic Plan meeting launched in Mutare recently NAC operations director, Raymond Yekeye said the assembling of local resources to fund the health sector was crucial in order to complement the progress made by Zimbabwe in managing HIV AIDS.
“We had partners who have been supporting the response but we noted that the support is declining. As it declines we need to find remedies to make sure that we do not lose the gains that we have achieved over the years,” said Yekeye.
“When I am talking about resources, I am not only talking about money but everything including our own human resources for health. How do we do things better in terms of implementation, where are we overlapping, are we in the right district targeting key populations. This will enable us to have a clearly developed road map that will help us to continue having sustained response in Zimbabwe,” said Yekeye.
FACT Zimbabwe executive director, Gertrude Shumba highlighted that there was need to establish other underlying causes by engaging communities in programming.
“From implementation experience FACT and other stakeholders have realized that whilst HIV was still at the Centre of all interventions, it is also important to understand and address the other underlying causes positively and aggressively with the shifts being towards community engagement and livelihoods programming.”
As of last year, only three Sub-Saharan African countries including Zimbabwe had achieved the UNAIDS 95-95-95 objectives.
In addition to the achievements, Zimbabwe’s Anti-Retroviral Therapy coverage currently stands at 99 percent of the 1, 3 million HIV positive people.
The new strategic plan launched by FACT will be focused on four key areas namely, safeguarding and sustainable livelihoods, health and well-being, organizational efficiency and effectiveness and strategic information and research.
FACT board chairperson, Washington Kuwana said the development of this plan was characterized by active engagement with various stakeholders considering changing health challenges and climate change related realities.
“Obviously there is still that HIV component in our strategic plan but it has been greatly reduced, we are no longer focusing more on that. We have turned to focus on mental health, drug abuse and so on which has been tabulated in our three year strategic plan. We have resources and we are looking for more to tackle these areas. With the partners that we have including government as our major one, we believe that in the next three years we will make a huge impact,” Kuwana said.
Presenting on the Safeguarding and sustainable livelihoods pillar, FACT official Bertha Mukome said they would be working on to improve agricultural productivity.
“We want to stimulate local economic development, build resilience as well as encourage sustainable natural resources uses. We want to promote social inclusion, build capacity for vulnerable households and communities so that they become more resilient to climate induced disasters. We will also implement climate risk management and adaptation interventions.”
Also present at the launch was Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Misheck Mugadza who commended FACT Strategy, saying it dovetails with government’s National Development Strategy1 (NDS1).
