Msiska
The National Aids Commission (NAC) will hold a Joint Annual Review (JAR) meeting of the national response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic with a focus on protecting the gains made amidst existing inequalities and emerging pandemics.
The event will be held at the Bingu International Convention Centre on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st October 2022 and will be presided over by the Minister of Health, Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda.
In a statement released to Malawi24, NAC Public Relations Officer Karen Msiska said the JAR is in exercise of NAC’s principal mandate of providing leadership, technical guidance, facilitation and coordination to the National Response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic as stipulated in the HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Management) Act Number 9 of 2018.
The event is a platform where NAC, its stakeholders, implementing partners and development partners take stock of the overall performance of activities in the National Response in the past financial year. The review covers all thematic areas of the National Strategic Plan (NSP) for HIV and AIDS (2020-2025).
“These NSP thematic areas are: Combination Prevention; Differentiated HIV Testing Services; Treatment, Care and Support for HIV and AIDS and Related Diseases; Tuberculosis and HIV Co-infection; Vulnerable Children; Reducing Human Rights and Gender-Related Barriers; Social and Behaviour Change Communication; and Resilient and Sustainable Systems for Health,” explained Msiska.
According to Msiska, this year’s event will be held under the theme “Protecting the gains in the Malawi HIV and AIDS Response amidst existing inequalities and emerging pandemics”.
If not contained, inequalities increase HIV vulnerability and prevent some sections of the society from timely accessing HIV and AIDS services, while emerging pandemics such as COVID-19 worsen the situation.
Therefore, this theme was selected for all stakeholder to renew their efforts to integrate the control of emerging pandemics and eliminate all forms of inequalities towards a successful fight against HIV and AIDS.
Malawi continues to make significant strides towards achieving its goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by the year 2030. According to the 2020-2021 Malawi Population-based HIV Impact Assessment, the country’s performance against the 95:95:95 treatment targets stands at 88:98:97. So too, as compared to the previous 2015-2016 MPHIA findings, the national HIV prevalence in adults has slightly reduced to 8.9%, and the number of new HIV infections among adults was reduced by 29%.
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