Prisons Aids project ended without audit, says official
What you need to know:
- Tanzania made headway in implementing the five year HIV/AIDS plan for the prisons communities since 2011, but ended up three years ago without assessing its performance.
Dar es Salaam. The first national plan to combat HIV/Aids in prisons ended three years ago without performance monitoring and assessment, the Tanzania Prisons Services Department has revealed.
In an interview with The Citizen on Tuesday, Prisons commissioner Augustine Sangalali Mboje said the 2011-2015 HIV/Aids plan was not assessed by stakeholders, a situation that kept the country in darkness in terms of fighting the disease in prisons for three years.
Mr Mboje said that the country was no longer deadlocked in waging war against the rapid spread of HIV/Aids in prisons after formulating the second five-year plan that will start in 2019 and end in 2023.
When he officially launched the plan, which is supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Mr Mboje said the new arrangement had provided a provision of assessing the previous plan for effective implementation.
“Under the new plan we have set a target of raising awareness on HIV/Aids among prison communities, including prisons officers, prison families and inmates by 70 per cent,” he said.
According to data released by the Tanzania Prisons Services at the Tuesday seminar, up to 2015 there were 39,000 prisoners countrywide, and 7.5 per cent of them were living with HIV/Aids.
The UNODC national project co-ordinator, Ms Emmaculate Nyoni, said the 2015 UN guidelines on handling inmates also stipulated the need to control the spread of HIV/Aids and improving the health services of prisoners.
“There are several UN rules for protecting the rights of prisoners which are known as Mandela rules, which must be endorsed by the government. Under this new plan more Mandela rules will ne endorsed,” said Ms Nyoni.
The Deputy Commissioner of Prisons, Mr Jeremiah Katungu said that under the new plan they will make sure that more Mandela rules for protecting the rights of prisoners get endorsement from the government.
The one day seminar, which included prisons officers, commissioners, senior officers and other stakeholders dwelt on discussing the new strategic plan for combating HIV/AIDS in prisons communities so that the spread on such disease will not spill over to civilian communities.
