Ntsoaki Motaung
Lesotho through its coordinating body, the National AIDS Commission (NAC) is getting ready and preparing for a sustainable HIV response beyond 2030.
According to the Executive Director of NAC, Lebohang Mothae, Lesotho is committed to the goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
She said the country is therefore committed to sustaining the gains that have been made in the HIV response, including increasing domestic financial investments, improving efficiencies, and making the necessary programmatic transformations necessary to sustain the HIV response to 2030 and beyond.
Mothae said it is in this background that NAC working together with the Ministry of Health held a briefing on Tuesday for Journalists on the Sustainability Planning process and together agreed on opportunities for the media sector’s contribution to technical assessments and identify opportunities for the media and areas of collaboration with various HIV and TB stakeholders and leverages available for overall sustainability plan development.
She indicated that the HIV response funding has been decreasing and the country also needs to be prepared to respond to HIV even when funding has been immensely affected.
“In this aspect, the country has started to get prepared at least in the procurement of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) by providing at least 70 percent funding to the purchase of ART.”
“The costs for providing ART to PLHIV on ART is estimated at M233,000,000.00 for the current fiscal year 2024/2025,” she said.
She said the HIV response sustainability is needed now because the global and financial circumstances have changed significantly leaving HIV financing at risk.
“Strategies and delivery modalities set to change and there is a need to scale up prevention and treatment programmes to reach the 2030 target will differ from those needed to sustain gains beyond 2030 as well as the requirement of a transformational reconfiguration of the HIV response,” she said.
Meanwhile, Maema Ramaema, Strategic Information Manager NAC, provided Lesotho’s HIV status as of 2023 and said there is an estimated number of 271,396 people living with HIV prevalence of 18.5 percent, 4810 new infections and 4056 AIDS-related deaths.
He said overall, the national AIDS response is pointing in the right direction and Lesotho is on track to meeting the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) 95, 95, 95 targets in 2025.
Ramaema said however, there is a need to accelerate and invest in combination prevention and close gaps for men, children and vulnerable populations such as young people and key populations.
“Lesotho must achieve elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and therefore launch intentionally a movement towards attaining zero vertical transmission from mother to child,” he said.
