Harare (New Ziana) -The successes that Zimbabwe is scoring in the fight against the HIV pandemic are a result of the rapid integration of research findings that it is implementing, a senior official has said.
Public health advisor to the President and Cabinet Dr Agnes Mahomva said this while addressing the ongoing International Conference on Aids and STIs in Africa (ICASA) on Tuesday.
She said the country is in the right direction in dealing with the epidemic as confirmed by the demographic health survey and the Zimbabwe Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (ZIMPHIA) data.
“Zimbabwe is one of the few African countries that has reached the UNAIDS 95-95-95 as I have said, and we are on track to meet the 2025 targets. New infections have declined, we have said it so many times now, and we are the first African country and the third country in the world to approve injectable prepping 2020, the first African country to approve the dapirivine ring in July 2021,” she said.
In December 2020 the United Nations Aids Organisation released a new set of ambitious targets calling for 95 percent of all people living with HIV to know their status, 95 percent of all people with diagnosed HIV infection to receive sustained antiretroviral therapy, and 95 percent of all people receiving antiretroviral treatment to have viral suppression by 2025.
Injectable prepping is injecting medication for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to lower the risk of getting HIV through sex for adults and teens who are at risk.
The dapiravine ring is a discreet one size fits all HIV microbicide tool developed by International Partnership for Microbicides for vulnerable female populations.
It is aimed at alleviating the disproportionate burden of females on the virulent virus across Sub Saharan Africa.
Dr Mahomva paid tribute to the late Professor James Gita Hakim whose research work she said generated a lot of science that made an impact on policy in controlling the HIV epidemic in Zimbabwe and beyond.
She said his mentorship and team support approach that prioritised the use of science motivated his teams, herself being one of them.
“I am one of the members of that team, the teams that he worked with to turn research findings into evidence-based policies, strategies, implementation approaches, and this was at all levels. It is not just policies at this level, policies at all levels and it was really demonstrated by how he worked with us junior doctors who had no clue of what to do with these HIV cases,” she said.
Professor Hakim (14 May 1954 to 26nJanuary 2021) was a South Sudanese and Ugandan internist, clinical epidemiologist, cardiologist, researcher, university faculty and academic mentor.
At the time of his death, he was Professor of Medicine and former chair of Internal Medicine at the University of Zimbabwe College of Health Sciences and had acquired Zimbabwean naturalised citizenship.
New Ziana
