NACOPHA: Time to scale up delivery of essential services to combat AIDS

Dar es Salaam. With the world marking the World AIDS Day tomorrow, the National Council of People Living with HIV in Tanzania (NACOPHA) says it was about time to equalize the delivery of essential services.

Designated on December 1, 1988, the World AIDS Day is an international day dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic and mourning those who have died of the disease.

This year’s theme is ‘Equalize’ and NACOPHA said in a media statement yesterday that there was the need for the Tanzania to scale up delivery of essential services to meet the national goal as outlined in the number 95-95-95.

The number seeks to ensure that by 2025, 95 percent of Tanzania’s population living with HIV gets aware of their status; that 95 percent of those testing are placed on HIV continuous treatment and that 95 percent of those on treatment reach viral suppression status.

“Thus this year’s theme reminds us of the need to ensure that all people living with HIV from their different community groups are able to get essential services in order to meet the national goal of 95-95-95,” the NACOPHA national chairperson, Ms Leticia Mourice said in the statement.

She said it was encouraging that this year’s World AIDS Day comes at a time when the number of men, women, boys and girls that access to essential HIV treatment and interest-free finance services has been rising during recent years.

“Basically, there has been an improvement in the delivery of HIV treatment services to youths, women and men…Besides, the population of women and youths living with HIV who have been economically empowered through interest-free loans is also on the increase,” said Ms Mourice.

Without revealing actual figures, she said the number of youths who have received vocational and entrepreneurship training as well as seed capital to conduct their income-generating ventures from the Prime Minister’s Office, has also increased significantly.

Being a national grassroots-based organization for people living with HIV, NACOPHA works with individuals in organized groups, clusters, and Networks of People living with HIV (PLHIV) in Tanzania.

With funding from USAID/PEPFAR, UNICEF, UNWOMEN and Global Fund, NACOPHA is actually the unified voice of PLHIV and coordinates efforts and contributions of PLHIV in the national HIV response in Tanzania mainland.

According to Ms Mourice, by working with the Prime Minister’s Office and with various other government departments and agencies, NACOPHA is now connected to 184 clusters across Tanzania mainland.

“With help from the government, NACOPHA currently has a total of 663,222 members, representing 47 percent of all people above 18 years who are on the national programme for treatment and education,” she said, adding that of the number, 63.5 percent are women.