According to the SADC Gender Protocol Barometer 2020 report, Zimbabwe despite battling an economic meltdown and other issues is doing well in fighting HIV/AIDS as compared to other countries like Lesotho, South Africa and Botswana, the Daily News reports.
The report claimed that Zimbabwe is employing a multi-sector strategy to strengthen population programmes about the disease:
Three Sadc nations — Eswatini (27 percent), Lesotho (22,8 percent) and Botswana (20,7 percent) have prevalences above 20 percent; five more between 10 and 20 percent South Africa (19 percent), Zimbabwe (12,8 percent), Mozambique (12,4 percent), Namibia (11,5 percent) and Zambia (11,5 percent)
Zimbabwe is intensifying multi-sector efforts to strengthen key population programmes, as outlined in its National Key Populations HIV and Aids Implementation Plan 2019-2020. Actions to address structural barriers include advocacy for law reforms, sensitisation of health-service providers or law enforcement agents, and media campaigns to eliminate stigma and discrimination
According to the publication, Zimbabwe’s HIV/AIDS rate declined from 18.2% in 2005 to 12.8% in 2020, of the 1.3 million living with the virus, about a million of them are on ARVs.
The government 3 years ago also came up with a 5 year HIV/AIDS testing strategy in order to raise the number of people who know their status. This was done in order to build on the progress made in the past decade, which saw new HIV infections in the country falling by 50% according to the publication.
More: Daily News
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