He said more
babies born from HIV positive mothers are
reported HIV negative but the challenge is to
encourage all women to visit antenatal clinics
and have births in hospitals to make this
program a success.
According to Mr. Khobotlo, Condom distribution
is still less than the country’s demand unless
if the program implementers are not reporting
about condom distribution.
The NSP progress report show that Multiple and
Concurrent Partners (MCP) is still the key
driver of HIV transmission. Therefore he said
the Behaviour Change Communications (BCC)
strategy and activities are geared towards
encouraging people to reduce multiple partners
and stick to one love/faithfulness.
HIV Testing and Counseling (HTC) is a key in
fighting the HIV and AIDS disease but there is
other sector of society that are still reluctant
to know their HIV status. On the progress of
Medical Male Circumcision, he said the program
has not been rolled out as comprehensive
campaign yet but just conducted according to
individuals needs.
Among the donors that contributed to fund the
NSP 2006 – 2011 activities include Global Fund
Round 2 HIV and TB, Round 5 HIV, Round 7 HIV,
Round 8 HIV/HSS and TB as well as Round 9HIV.
Other donors are PEPFAR, Millennium Challenge
Account (MCA), United Nations (UN) family,
European Union, Irish aid, GTZ, World Bank as
well as Government budget and local institutions
and private sector.
Following the implementation of NSP, currently
the survival rate of HIV positive people is 74%
which is attributed to ARV consumption but there
are still challenges of defaults and lack of
treatment adherence.
The NSP 2006 – 2011 activities address the needs
of different groups of society namely orphans
and vulnerable children, prisoners, people with
disabilities, sex minorities, herdboys,
workplaces, infected and affected people and the
community at large.
However, Mr. Khobotlo said not all indicators in
the NSP were met by 100%, but tremendous
progress were made in different areas to scale
up national response namely PMTCT, PEP and HTC
adding that Behaviour Change remain as a major
challenge attributed to rapid HIV transmission.
Meanwhile the new NSP 2011 – 2016 which is now
ready was also presented to the participants at
this forum. This NSP address all gaps identified
in the previous one and made new strategies to
address the previous gaps.
The vision of the new NSP is to guide the
Kingdom to significantly reduce new infections,
and ensure people on treatment live long and
productive lives and build strong social safety
nets for OVCs and vulnerable households.
The priorities areas to be addressed in the new
NSP include : to accelerate and intensify HIV
prevention in order to reduce new infection by
50% by 2015/16, to scale up universal access to
quality treatment, care and support, to mitigate
the impact of HIV as well as to monitor and
evaluate programs through HIV researches.
Participants at the NAC forum were stakeholders
who fund and implement different program areas
as stipulated in the new and old NSPs as well
infected and affected communities drawn from all
districts in the country.
