25 Jan 2017

The Mayor of Francistown Ms Sylvia Muzila has stated that winning the fight against HIV/AIDS requires commitment and team work in order to achieve zero new infections by 2030.

She was speaking at a press conference on the 90-90-90 HIV treatment target by 20202 to be launched in Francistown on January 31.

The 90-90-90 initiative is a holistic intervention plan whose aim is to achieve a 90 per cent goal of people living with HIV/AIDS knowing their status and a further 90 per cent of those individuals who know their HIV/AIDS status enrolled on treatment and lastly 90 per cent of  individuals on treatment having suppressed viral loads hence the 90-90-90 initiative.

Ms Muzila indicated that the City of Francistown has therefore committed itself to achieving 90-90-90 target by the year 2020 .

She indicated that with numerous scientific breakthroughs, community activism and political commitment in the fight against HIV/AIDS, cities around the world have been forced to uniquely position themselves to join the campaign.

The mayor stated that as the leadership of Francistown they are committed to mobilise resources to ensure that every individual in the city and nearby districts making up the Greater Francistown are aware of the role they have to play in order to achieve set goals.

She further acknowledged that the initiative intends to achieve this through providing sustained access to testing, treatment and prevention services with the intention of addressing issues of risk, vulnerability and transmission among others.

According to the Greater Francistown District Health Management Team (DHMT) head of the preventative services, Dr Tebogo Mokgwane, the one challenge they are faced with is getting people to test for HIV/AIDS and other opportunistic infections.

He elaborated that once they have achieved that, it would be easy to enroll them in government programmes to combat the spread of the virus and avert AIDS related deaths and other opportunistic diseases.

When giving her closing remarks, the Francistown District Commissioner Ms Chabongwa Matseka concluded by saying that initiatives such as these show the commitment  the government of Botswana has to totally eradicating HIV.

She called upon Batswana to engage vigorously in community mobilisation efforts as such is the only way to reach many of the world's population  many of whom are found in cities.

The 90-90-90 Mayors initiative is an intervention plan that was declared in December 2014 in Paris hence the name “Paris Declaration”. BOPA