By Michael Gwarisa
The Minister of Health and Child Care (MoHCC), Dr Douglas Mombeshora says more than 87 percent of children in Zimbabwe are now on child-friendly Dolutegravir (DTG) based formulations.
His remarks follow indications that children in Zimbabwe were lagging regarding treatment coverage and data from 2022 shows that only 69 percent of children living with HIV were on Antiretroviral Treatment compared to 95 percent of adults on ART.
Speaking during a panel session of Accelerating the Implementation of the Global Alliance Country Action Plan to End AIDS in Children by 2030 at the ongoing ICASA, minister Mombeshora said Zimbabwe had scaled up innovations to find children living with HIV in a bid to link and retain them on ART using community-based strategies.
“To increase the third 95 of UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets, Zimbabwe is supporting peer support mechanisms including the use of networks for PLHIV to keep children on treatment to achieve viral suppression. “To date, we have rolled out child Fridley formulations with more than 87 percent of children on DTG Based formulations and our target is to reach 98 percent by the end of this year 2023, a target which is attainable,” said Dr Mombeshpora.
He added that in response to the current treatment disparities, the Ministry of Health has developed its Global Alliance Country Work plan presented at the High-Level meeting in Dare-Salam Tanzania.
Zimbabwe was represented by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga at that meeting. Since its launch the Global Alliance has been fully costed and implementation accelerated in partnership with UNICEF, World Health Organisation (WHO), UNAIDS and other funding partners and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) including Networks of People Living with HIV.
“We recently convened a meeting of the Global Alliance Country Team to take stock of progress on the implementation of the Global Alliance Work plan.” He said that progress has been made in several areas including domesticating the global alliance and ending AIDS in children by 2030 with a high level of political commitment.
“My Ministry has been progressing in moving from dual elimination of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV and Syphilis, to tipple elimination of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV, Syphilis and Hepatitis B Virus.”
At the pre-world AIDS Day commemorations in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe launched its Triple EMTCT pan and on December 2, 2023, First Lady Auxilia Mnangagwa hosted the African First Ladies at a high-level organisation of Africa First Ladies for the Development (OFLAD) for the meeting on ending new HIV infections among children by 2030.
Dr Billiart Tapesana, the Executive Director at Zvandiri said the Community Adolescents Treatment Support (CATS) was a success story of communities taking the lead in the HIV and AIDS response. “There has been phenomenal success regarding the integration of community cadres in this response. In Zimbabwe we have the CATS, they have been trained and mentored to help their peers, counsel their peers and collect the services that they require. The CATS have been adopted by the ministry of health and have been seconded to health facilities to offer services to their peers,” said Dr Tapesana
