15 Nov 2021

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) secretariat has forked out P5 million towards an HIV prevention project to be implemented by Botswana Family Welfare Association (BOFWA), Namibian Planned Parenthood Association and the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council.

The project dubbed, SADC HIV Combination Prevention Project, launched officially in Maun last Friday under the theme: Voice and Agency Towards the Tipping Point.

National Aids & Health Promotion Agency (NAHPA) national coordinator, Mr Ontiretse Letlhare congratulated the three NGOs for collaborating to undertake a project of such magnitude.

He said it was pleasing to note that it would be implemented largely by adolescent girls and boys as well as young women and men aged between 10 and 24 years in their respective countries.

HIV infections, he said were generally levelling down across the population spectrum of the sub-region though it was worrying that adolescent girls and young women continued to be disproportionally affected by new HIV infections.

Mr Letlhare said the SADC Strategy for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (2019-2030), showed that girls and young women continued to bear the brunt of the disease, with rates of new infections higher than those for boys of their age.

“This unfortunate occurrence calls for all of us to come up with more targeted interventions using a peer approach, which is what this project is all about and this is the reason why the chosen theme for the launch is most appropriate as the implementation of the project will grant the youth their voice to create agency,” he added.

In order to customise the response and sharpen its efficacy, adolescent boys and young men should co-lead alongside their female counterparts.

In this way both adolescent boys and young men would be empowered on HIV prevention needs and have a voice to articulate their challenges as well as determine the corresponding response measures.

Mr Letlhare also stated that in in 2017 UNAIDS identified the three partner countries in the project as among those with high HIV incidence rate within the sub-region, and they were found to be very low in programming for adolescent girls and young women as well as adolescent boys and young men.

The gaps identified through several reports and across the three countries, he said had shown untargeted interventions, weak service delivery, limited data, insufficient involvement and engagement of adolescent girls and young women in coordination planning and execution of interventions intended to benefit them.

However, he appealed to the target groups across the three countries to harness the power of their numbers to strengthen their voice and take responsibility for their lives.

He also urged parents, families and communities to open up and facilitate communication with their children.

Mr Letlhare implored them to give children voice to build agency and reduce new HIV infections within their cohort as well as among their younger siblings.

Kgosi Kealetile Moremi welcomed the implementation of the project in Maun saying it would indeed help to reduce the spread of HIV anong adolescents.

She said statistics for 2021 indicated that Botswana was ranked amongst the four top countries in the world with high HIV prevalence.

She hoped the project would go a long way towards changing that.

Meanwhile, BOFWA executive director, Ms Una Ngwenya explained in a side interview that the project would complement existing services and education as it would increase access to integrated HIV & sexual reproductive health services, which included HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI), promoting condom use and preventing unplanned pregnancies.

“Our intention is to reach out to young people because we want them to voice their concerns at a tender age. We will be working with parents, teen clubs, schools and other youth structures to ensure we achieve our goal,” she added.
Ms Ngwenya also noted that the project would end in 2023. Ends