The Sunday Mail
Fatima Bulla
AS the 18th International Conference on Aids and STIs in Africa take off on November 29, Zimbabwe remains on course having managed to achieve the set global target of halving new infections and HIV related deaths by 2015.
This major Aids conference which will end on December 4 is running under the theme “Aids in Post 2015 Era: Linking Leadership, Science and Human Rights”.
A progress report on the global response for the period January – December 2014 complied by the National Aids Council states that, “HIV transmission from mother to child has reduced from 21 percent in 2009 to 9.2 percent in 2014 indicating that we are close to achieving the global elimination target of less than five percent.”
In addition the UNAIDS strategy report for 2016-2018 states that in the past 15 years, the annual number of people newly infected by HIV has dropped from 3,1 million to 2 million with the number of children acquiring HIV falling by 58 percent to 220 000 per year between 2004 and 2014.
And it is against this background that the National Aids Council sees ICASA as a perfect platform for the nation to present its experiences to the continent from a southern-African perspective which is an epicentre of the epidemic.
“We are on course to achieve global targets but it has to be zero (new infections, Aids related deaths and stigma and discrimination cases). That is the vision,” Mr Amon Mpofu, Nac’s Monitoring and Evaluation director said.
Nac says finalisation of the national investment case to advocate for filling of the funding gaps is a future priority for Zimbabwe and rightly has to be so as a greater chunk of the interventions are being supported externally.
The progress report states that 85 percent of the total cost of the national response is externally funded with domestic spending also increasing by 40 percent from 2011 to 2014.
Some of these funders include DFID, Global Fund, Unicef, the US Government, CIDA, WHO, Australian Aid among other organisations.
According to Mr Mpofu this tends to be a serious draw back when it comes to implementing programmes to combat epidemic.
“It is difficult because you cannot decide for the donors. Until Government manages to give more funding, having to rely on external funding is a challenge. You would see that we get $38 million against a need of $300 000 million. So currently we remain limited as we are not able to cover everyone.
“So the ICASA conference gives a platform for the donors to understand the problems and efforts we have made so that they can make decisions which will meet our needs,” Mr Mpofu said.
For the period 2013-2014 the Government of Zimbabwe provided funding through the AIDS Levy amounting to $532 950 registering a 1,4 percent increase from the previous period.
Zimbabwe received $1 million from WHO between 2013-2014 registering a one percent decline from the previous two years. Support from Global Fund registered a significant cut from $3, 548,743 down to $424,650 between 2012 and 2014.
