A Zimbabwean delegation comprising of National AIDS Council (NAC) and Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) staff, recently travelled to Botswana to train and assist their counterparts to develop HIV Prevention Cascades.
By Michael Gwarisa
The training follows bilateral discussions between the two countries facilitated by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) country office in Botswana who had noted the progress that Zimbabwe had made in developing HIV prevention cascades to inform planning, implementation and tracking of the HIV response in the country.
In an interview with HealthTimes, National Aids Council Operations Director, Mr Raymond Yekeye said, the training which happened over three days resulted in Botswana developing their own cascades at national level as well as developing a roadmap for the decentralization of the process to District level
The main objective of the training was to improve knowledge on HIV prevention programme effectiveness, monitoring and efficacy through building capacity on the application of the Cascade model in HIV programs and defining the use of HIV cascades in program monitoring,” said Mr Yekeye.
The training according to Mr Yekeye also sought to provide estimates of the proportion of populations lost at each stage of intervention implementation at all levels; as well as provide guidelines to applying cascades at different levels in the health system that can inform actions to improve interventions effectiveness towards achievement of targets at each stage of the cascade.
HIV prevention cascades have been used globally as a tool to improve uptake of and adherence to HIV prevention methods. The approach offers a graphical representation of reach and uptake of HIV interventions, in a series of stages to identify missed opportunities in HIV prevention, from either the patient/client or the provider perspective. HIV cascades also have the potential to be used as a advocacy and resource mobilization tool for policy makers.
The training was attended by 50 participants from Botswana Ministry of Health, National AIDS and Health Promotion Agency, the UN Family and CSO partners involved in implementation of HIV programmes
“Basically, the Botswana team was interested in how to identify the required data sources, developing indicators and assumptions for the different programme areas and finally the developed of the actual cascades.
“Besides the training the Botswana colleagues in developing the cascades, the Zimbabwe also took the opportunity to learn how NAC Botswana has transformed itself to incorporate Health Promotion and NCDs as part of their mandate. The team also discussed the progress that Botswana has made towards achieving the 95/95/95 targets and some of the strategies can be transformed and adapted to suit the Zimbabwe context.”
Mr Yekeye added that the two countries exchanged notes on how to enhance collaboration in different HIV programmes including sharing of capacities as may be required from time to time by either country. They also agreed to ensure that the Zimbabwe team will remain available to support Botswana as they embark on their journey to customize HIV Cascades.
