Authorities have expressed optimism that the country is on track in battling the spread of HIV by the year 2030.
Speaking during the Joint Annual Review Conference of the National Response to HIV/AIDS in Lilongwe, Secretary for Health Dr Charles Mwansambo said Malawi has surpassed some of the critical areas in the 90:90:90 target.
Dr Mwansambo has told us that despite the tremendous progress in the fight against the virus, more needs to be done as statistics are showing that women and girls are mostly the ones contracting the virus as of now.
“We need to engage an extra gear because as you are ware we set out target for 90:90:90, as national we need to do a lot of more in that sector in order to reduce infection.
We are still getting a lot of new infections, we are supposed to reduce the new infections by 75% but we have only managed about 31%, also know that there is one group that is prone that is adolescence and young women,” said Dr Mwansambo.
And the august House through its Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on HIV/AIDS and Nutrition Deus Gumba has suggested the need for amending the country`s laws aiming at inclusion of key populations in the fight.
“It`s high time now that perhaps we see how we can amend the HIV/AIDS Prevention Management Act so that we can incorporate issues to do with key populations in the same law,” said Gumba.
Meanwhile, the National Aids Commission Acting Chief Executive Officer Dr Andrew Gonani said the review is very paramount saying that it will help the Commission to assess some critical areas of concern.
“The area of focus with regards to HIV prevention is what we call Combination HIV Prevention strategies which is a package of prevention tools.
So this a package that we are going to offer to the communities and not everybody would fit into each package, people will be selecting what would fit them in order to prevent themselves from catching HIV,” said Dr Gonani.
In the intervening time, NAC is working on the 2020-2025 National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan (NSP).
