Let communities lead to end AIDS pandemic
ZIMBABWE has a fantastic opportunity to end the AIDS pandemic by 2030 by letting communities lead.
Communities of people living with HIV or at risk of the virus are drivers of progress in the AIDS response.
They connect people to public health services, build trust, innovate, monitor the implementation of policies and services, and hold service providers accountable.
For example, in Zimbabwe, community-led organisations deliver services to their peers and employ peerled approaches to provide services to the populations most affected by HIV and AIDS. The country has a strong peer-led programme, responding to the needs of sex workers, high-risk men and people of diverse genders.
The Key Populations Programme — one of the few in Africa with national coverage — reaches more than 38 000 sex workers each year and operates in 12 static, 13 drop-in centres (nine specifically for young women who sell sex), 26 highway mobile and 118 highway and local mobile clinic sites across all 10 provinces of Zimbabwe,
supported by PEPFAR/USAID and the Global Fund. The contribution of the community-led organisations in the AIDS response has helped tackle other pandemics and health crises, too, including Covid-19.
Letting communities lead builds healthier and stronger societies. But so many communities face barriers to their leadership.
Community-led responses are under-recognised, under-resourced and, in some places, even under attack.
Globally, funding for communities has fallen by 11 percent in the last 10 years from 31 percent in 2012 to 20 percent in 2022.
These funding shortages, policy and regulatory hurdles and capacity constraints are obstructing the progress of HIV prevention, treatment and care services.
It is in everyone’s interest to fully fund community-led organisations and remove the many obstacles they face.
It is by enabling communities in their leadership that the promise to end AIDS can be realised.
This is why communities were at the centre of World AIDS Day commemorations this year, including in a major new UNAIDS report — “Let Communities Lead”.