The HIV and AIDS stakeholders have reviewed progress on the National Response to HIV and AIDS for the fiscal year 2009/2010 during the national Annual HIV and AIDS Partnership Forum meeting convened by the National AIDS Commission (NAC) on May 20, 2010.

The forum is an annual occasion that is established in line with the National HIV and AIDS Coordination Framework to provide opportunity to monitor and review implementation of the Annual Operational Plan, which is drawn from the National Strategic Plan.

The annual forum offers a platform to take stock on all HIV and AIDS interventions and efforts in scaling-up the response by all implementing partners, as well as ensuring holistic reporting on national initiatives.

The forum took a form of providing an overview of progress on the national response and an update on some of the universal access targets, district progress reports, presentations focusing on the HIV and AIDS response from civil society organisations, the public sector and the business and labour sector.

The national and district reports covered the four thematic areas of Management and Coordination, Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support and Impact Mitigation, showing what different Implementing Partners were doing in these areas as an effort towards scaling up the national response to HIV and AIDS.

It was apparent that a number of achievements were realised during 2009/2010, while challenges were also highlighted. Among the many achievements are the establishment of coordination structures which are now functional at both District and community levels, that is, District AIDS Committees & Community Council AIDS Committees.

There was also progress in the world of work response to HIV and AIDS; noting the establishment of the business labour coalition and establishment of policies and strategic plans in both the public and business sector.

In prevention, it was reported that a number of interventions were also undertaken by various stakeholders. Distribution of IEC materials and general awareness and advocacy campaigns were undertaken. The Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) Strategy was launched, disseminated and its implementation was underway.

Various prevention programmes for young people by young people have been initiated. Other initiatives including PMTCT and treatment of STI’s also continued for the period under review.

In the area treatment, care and support, areas covered were home-based care, TB/HIV collaboration and ART. The number of people newly enrolled on pre-HAART was said to be 49,642, while there were 62,190 people that were on treatment. On average 7,874 males received home-based care and 5,760 females received home-based care. On a positive note, the survival rate of people on ARVs was reported to be at 80.07%.

In terms of TB/HIV con-infection, 78% of individuals diagnosed with TB were also tested for HIV. Of those, 76.5% were found to be HIV positive. 94.5% of that group was put on cotrimoxazole prophylaxis (CPT) and 27.6% were enrolled on ART.

Progress on Impact Mitigation reveals that a number of implementing patterns are focusing on providing support to Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) to
improve their way of living. Focus of support seems to be in the provision of food packages, clothing and grants.

A notable campaign was the Red Light 2010 Campaign, which was launched in Maseru to raise awareness about human trafficking and gender based-violence. There were also various programmes targeting commercial sex workers.

New estimates were revealed during the forum showing that the national HIV prevalence rate had increased from 23.2% to 23.6%. The reasons put forward in explaining this scenario were that on one hand having put a lot of people on treatment and it being successful; HIV positive people live longer, thus increasing the pool of HIV positive people. On the other hand, this also meant that new infections were continuing to occur. This therefore calls for concerted efforts by all stakeholders to ‘close the tap’ on new infections.