Article By: Lloyd M’bwana
The Ministry of Health (MoH) has for the first time launched the much awaited HIV Viral Load Testing Scale up Strategic and Implementation Plan intending to reach 70% of the country’s population in 2018.
The development comes barely four years after the same ministry in 2012 launched also routine HIV Viral Load Testing (VLT) for antiretroviral therapy (ART) patients signifying Malawi’s strong commitment to providing the highest standards of health care for people living with HIV and AIDS which is in tandem with the National HIV and AIDS strategic plan of 2015-2020.
However, implementation of such ambitious plan requires an overall estimated investment of US$17,202, 040 over the next three years in a bid to contribute reaching the United Nation AIDS (UNAIDS) last 90 target by 2020.
Of the estimated 1.1 million Malawians living with HIV an average of 590,517 are expected to be taking ART during 2015 and 775,202 in 2018 representing 70% coverage as currently only 27% are being met on VLT.
Therefore, the document launched provides an overview of the scale up efforts to date, and outlines the strategic and implementation plan required to ensure that the continued scale up of VLT services is efficient and effective.
Speaking in an interview with The Maravi Post in the capital Lilongwe after the launch, Minister of Health Dr. Peter Kumpalume hinted that plan will serve as the basis and framework for continuing collaboration between partners and government in increasing access to VLT and ensuring consistency in practices for scaling up VLT throughout the country.
Dr. Kumpalume further noted that the document provides a means of monitoring progress against targets and timelines set, and identity any resource gap which may require additional funding allocations.
“This HIV Scale up Strategic and implementation plan has been developed to address the gap between Malawi’s current VLT capacities and the estimated need for VLT by the end of 2018 with an overall coverage of 70% for reaching universal access to ART.
“Therefore, for such an ambitious initiative to be materialized, an estimated investment of US$17,202, 040 is required for the next three years. However, funds are already committed for about US$7.2 million with an additional US$10 million is needed for the whole exercise.
“The Malawi government is optimistic that its partners including the USA Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organisation (WHO) and others will continue providing with the financial support as they have been doing in first phase of the exercise”, optimistic Kumpalume.
Speaking on the same, Dr. Sandeep Gupta, CDC country Director assured of his institution financial and technical support saying Malawians will be able to benefit a lot with resources put across in order to prevent further HIV transmission with a national wide VL program monitoring and maintaining viral suppression.
Malawi’s 2010 Demographic and Health Survey estimated that 10.6% of Malawians are HIV positive with different prevalence rates in geographical regions whereby the south topping the list at 14.5% seconded by central with 7.6% and the north at 6.6% while the rural populace trending at 8.7% so with the urban at 17.4%.In his remarks, the president of the trainees through their group known as Men As Partners (MAPs) which consist of men who are regarded as the role models in their respective areas Davie Chilongo, commended the organizations for the training saying “it will change a lot of things in their family apart from issues of curbing maternal and neonatal death in the district as they have also been skilled things concerning family planning as well as ways of dealing with HIV/AIDS disease.”
Meanwhile, the project donated the new model ambulance to the district hospital worth 33m Malawi Kwacha as part of its assets to reach its goal of reducing the Maternal and neonatal death.
