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Coordination vital in fight against HIV and AIDS
Extracted from the UNICEF update from the First Zimbabwean National AIDS Conference June 15-18, 2004
June 18, 2004

The conference final day focused on identifying opportunities available for the many stakeholders to work together on improving and strengthening their effectiveness in the fight against HIV and AIDS. In summarizing on how best to proceed, Mr. Manenji of the National AIDS Council (NAC) proposed that NAC coordinate partner intervention efforts to address the pandemic. He believed a holistic approach would lesson duplication, ensure greater synergy, networking and transparency.

Established through an Act of Parliament with a mandate to coordinate the HIV and AIDS response and channel the monies appropriately, the National AIDS Council must look to strengthen its role as the major coordinating body. Mr. Manenji explained that NAC itself obtained its funding through the AIDS Levy which is 3% of all taxable income. Ninety percent of this was disbursed to decentralized structures at the village and ward level by the District AIDS Committees (DACs). The remaining 10%, he explained, went to support strategic institutions, such as the MOHCW which has both the infrastructure and technical expertise necessary to support critical interventions like anti retroviral therapy and drug treatments to fight opportunistic infections.

He said proper coordination was needed in matters of policy formulation, programme intervention, and monitoring and evaluation to prevent some areas from being overwhelmed with assistance, while others remained totally neglected. It was thus prudent, he said, to establish a problematic database at the ward, district and village levels in order to identify and clarify "who was doing what, and where".

Fewer resources were being committed to monitoring and evaluation, he reported, yet these activities were crucial for checking the efficacy of every programme implemented. To address this gap, he announced that the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) was working with the NAC and other partners to improve monitoring and evaluation. He said research was yet another neglected area, even though this activity is essential to ensuring the country "moved with the times".

In answer to the question of why many AIDS-infected patients died under conditions of dire neglect, Mr. Manenji said the NAC simply did not have the resources to pay people to care for the ill. The Council could only commit itself to supplying the simplest of home based care kits, currently valued at Z$300 000 each. With that provision, it was then hoped that the communities and relatives of the sick would be able to supplement their care.

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