Government's Chief Medical Doctor, Donald Mbando
The announcement was made on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam by the
government’s Chief Medical Doctor, Donald Mbando at a health
stakeholders meeting convened to commemorate ten years of AIDS relief
programmes through a five member consortium funded by the US President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
He said the government is working in collaboration with AIDS relief
partners to implement a care and treatment model that emphasises its
core components equally, clinical care, strategy information and site
management. Detailing, he said currently, healthcare providers,
community members and implementing partners efforts have reduced HIV
infection from 7 per cent in 2003 to 5.1 percent this year.
According to him, it was initially estimated that by the end of
2012,the number of people living with HIV was 1.6 million and total of
68,447 newly HIV infected people aged 15-49 years.
However the 2002 research report showed that 70.5 of new HIV
infection were in the age 25-49 age group and 15 percent in the 15-24
age groups.
About 72,000 newborn babies were infected with HIV in 1999 and estimated number of orphans is over 600,000, he said.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Country Representative, Conor Walsh
said that their role is to ensure efficiency of support programmes.
He said it also has the duty of supervising, monitoring and
institution strengthening so that care and health services are offered
as expected.
“Today AIDS Relief/Lead consortium is grateful to witness that
health services given to the HIV/AIDS been scaled up and improved,”
Walsh said.
He said recently the AIDS Relief/Lead consortium has extended its
services in Mwanza and Arusha region apart from Handeni District in
Tanga, and Mara Region.
According to him, the deep commitment to partnership underscored
AIDS Relief’s relationship and capacity strengthening activities have
led to the success.
“Our duty was broad, to identify and manage treatment failure or
other adverse drug effects, to diagnose, treat and prevent opportunistic
infections such as tuberculosis and pneumonia,” he noted.
