Gaborone joins Fast Track Cities
Botswana’s capital city, Gaborone is set to be included in the Fast Track Cities and the Mayor of Gaborone Austin Abraham is to sign a Memorandum of Agreement, which will see the city joining the Fast Track Cities.
The Fast Track Cities is an international initiative that has partnered with the UNAIDS and intends to combat HIV/ AIDS. Fast Track Cities has a mandate to win the fight against new cases of HIV/AIDS by 2030.
The entity has over 400 cities that are into this movement that intends on getting to zero new cases of HIV, zero preventable deaths, zero stigma and discrimination and a better life quality for people living with HIV/ AIDS and Gaborone is set to be one of the new cities included in this movement.
On November 1, 2022, the GCC will sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will see Gaborone joining the Fast Track Cities officially. “It is only fit that Gaborone also joins the Fast Track Cities because it provides support to priority cities to fast track their HIV responses, to deliver the commitments to end HIV by 2030,” said Abraham. Fast Track Cities focuses mostly on cities as it is cities that are really the hotspot of the virus in high numbers as people relocate from rural areas to urban areas in search of better lives and once these people get here in cities, most of them end up being sex workers which leads to them being on high risks of contracting the disease, which is why the fast track movement focuses mostly on the cities.
Abraham said on top of the signing the MoU for Fast Track Cities, the GCC will also be signing another MoU for the Paris Declaration and Seville Declaration on World AIDS Day, which is on December 1.
“We intend on continuing with the fight against HIV/AIDS so that we can also see the number of our new cases simmer down and our success story of the fight against HIV/AIDS can really advocate for us as we have achieved the target of the UNAID of 95-95-95 targets, which stand for people living with HIV aware of their status, people on treatment and people that are living with HIV that is virally suppressed,” Abraham noted. On other news, Alankar Malviya, the country director and representative of Botswana from the UNAIDS revealed that by Gaborone joining this movement, is really a great step in the right direction in the fight against HIV/AIDS as this will really help the country with the fight against HIV/AIDS and get to the zero new cases as the target of the Fast Track stipulates.
“We do not only want to focus this initiative in Gaborone. We can assure you that we plan on including the Francistown City Council in this initiative so that we include the two cities in the fight against HIV/ AIDS,” added Malviya.