Story by Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
ZIMBABWE has achieved significant progress in the global elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, Hepatitis B and syphilis, the National AIDS Council (NAC) has reviewed.
NAC Chief Executive Officer, Dr Benard Madzima says Zimbabwe has trained health workers in all districts on the triple elimination strategy, bringing the country closer to its goal of reducing mother-to-child transmission rates to less than 5%.
“As of now, all the districts in Zimbabwe have health workers who are trained on the triple elimination strategy. So those are the achievements which even at global level have been noted and have been acknowledged,” he said.
“For the elimination of mother to child transmission, the triple elimination, we aim to be less than 5%. In other words, if we get to 5%, we would have been validated. At the moment, we have moved from around 11% from the last survey which was done and we are at around 7%. So we acknowledge the work which has been done. We have a national validation committee which has looked at the roadmap to the elimination of mother-to-child transmission.
“In terms of the roadmap to elimination of mother-to-child transmission, the programme is now alert to those cases where a mother might be negative, maybe during pregnancy, but then they seroconvert to being positive during breastfeeding. So we tell those women that they are at high risk. There is an assessment which we now do for those women who might have been negative prenatally, but as the pregnancy continues and they deliver and they start breastfeeding, we are alert that they might be at risk of being positive and thereby transmitting to the child. So we have a programme of pre-exposure prophylaxis to those women.”
The country has also surpassed the 2025 UNAIDS targets of 95-95-95.
“As far as the key performance indicators for the HIV and AIDS programme is concerned, Zimbabwe has done well in terms of achieving the 2025 UN AIDS targets of 95-95-95. In Zimbabwe, we have got 97% of the adult population having been tested and knowing their status. And of those, 96% are on effective ARV treatment. And of those on effective ARV treatment, 95% of them have a suppressed viral load,” Dr Madzima said.
NAC was recognised as a top-performing public entity for its outstanding achievements in surpassing the UNAIDS 2025 95-95-95 targets and successfully implementing its Triple Elimination Strategy, earning the distinction at the 2024 Performance Contracts Evaluation Results and Awards Ceremony held on Monday.
