By Michael Gwarisa
Renowned African feminist and UNAIDS Executive Director, Ms Winfred Byanyima is among tthe top dignitaries set to attend the International Conference on AIDS and SITs in Africa (ICSA) to be held in Harare from December 4 to 9, 2023.
While Ms Byanyima is scheduled to speak at the ICASA, she has also set aside her diary to accommodate for interviews with media on Monday December, 4 2023, from 18.00 – 19.00 at HICC, Rainbow Towers Hotel, Room.
At ICASA, Ms Byanyima is calling on governments, international organizations and partners to harness the power of grassroots AIDS communities across the continent to lead the way in the fight against the pandemic; Ensure sufficient and sustainable funding to protect the gains made against HIV and to sustain the gains beyond 2030; Ensure inclusion, by tackling inequalities that are holding back progress to end the
pandemic everywhere in the world.
Today, in Eastern and Southern Africa, there are 20.8 million people living with HIV and last year there were 500,000 people newly infected with HIV the burden of which lies with young women and girls – there is still no vaccine and still no cure,” said UNAIDS.
“The stark contrast of successes in some areas and failures in others confirms that HIV remains a pandemic of inequalities. Five countries in this region – Eswatini, Rwanda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe have reached the 95-95-95 targets of 95% of people knowing their HIV status, 95% of people who know their status being on treatment and 95% of people on treatment being virally suppressed and unable to transmit the virus. Yet without urgent action, the rest of the world looks unlikely to meet its targets.”
Meanwhile, UNAIDS has released the World AIDS Day Report – Let Communities Lead – that reveals the path to ending AIDS as a public health threat is to let communities in the front lines lead the way. But communities are under-resourced, unrecognized and in some places even under attack. The report outlines how, by removing these obstacles, the full potential of community leadership will be unleashed, allowing the world to end AIDS by 2030.
World leaders have pledged to end AIDS in this decade. But the global struggle, already off track, is at risk of being knocked off course in the fall out from the Covid crisis, the war in Ukraine and the global economic crisis.
