HEALTH and Child Care minister Douglas Mombeshora has bemoaned the plight of women who continue to constitute a greater percentage of new HIV infections.
Speaking during the World Aids Day commemorations at John Cowie Primary School in Rusape yesterday, Mombeshora said women continued to bear the brunt of the pandemic, although new infections had overally dropped.
Of the 15 400 new infections recorded last year, women accounted for 9 200 of them.
“Among adolescents, women also accounted for 1 500 of the 1 700 new infections. Evidence has shown that this is largely driven by gender inequalities and socio-economic vulnerabilities that heighten exposure to HIV.
“Additional to the high impact HIV prevention interventions already in place, my ministry working together with the National Aids Council, donors and partners is delivering key targeted interventions including distribution and promotion of the female condom, the DREAMS and Sista 2 Sista programmes and various gender transformative programmes including the SASSA model and interventions meant to ensure that young girls remain in school longer and that child pregnancies and marriages are eradicated in line with our laws,” he said.
Mombeshora said this was regardless of the fact that Zimbabwe had continued to record reduced new HIV infections from year to year and the number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy had continued to rise as the country pursues the 95-95-95 by 2025 targets.
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“Pursuing these targets has been a major part of restoring the rights and dignity of our people, whose lives have been transformed by the national response.
“Based on solid and deliberate policies and interventions adopted by Zimbabwe, our response has recorded significant milestones, which have made us a global example for the effective reduction of new HIV infections and domestic funding among other achievements,” he said.
Mombeshora said, while the country had recorded progress in the fight against HIV, it was not yet on an irreversible path towards ending Aids by 2030.
“Results have indicated that the pace of reducing new HIV infections is slower and that we may miss the target of ending Aids if we continue doing the same things the same way we have been doing them.
“While our HIV prevention interventions have been robust and led to the identification of 95% of all HIV-positive people, we have to be more strategic in identifying the remaining 5% to ensure optimal use of resources.
“Complementary to the ongoing provider-initiated HIV testing, my ministry has introduced HIV case-based surveillance to identify and track remaining pockets of HIV transmission and areas of service gaps.”
He said Zimbabwe had scaled up HIV self-testing through widespread distribution of oral fluid-based and blood-based kits.
“These services are being rendered within the framework of differentiated service delivery that tailors testing, treatment and care to the needs and circumstances of the client,” he said.
Mombeshora said government was taking steps to protect the rights of children through scaling up of services.
“The steps we have taken include training of staff, nucleic acid testing of infants at facilities and provision of child-friendly antiretroviral therapy that tastes better and dissolves faster,” he said.
“Children are also a priority population for viral load monitoring at the facilities. In this regard, we have increased the number of sites offering point of care early infant diagnosis to over 150 using MPIMA and Gene Expert for faster delivery of results for HIV exposed infants.”