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Lovemore Zigara
Zimbabwe is viewed largely as a success story in its fight to reduce the HIV prevalence rate. From a prevalence rate of 25 percent at the turn of the millennium to the prevailing 15 percent, the Southern African nation is rightly regarded as one of the major successes in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Key players in the HIV and Aids fight say more still needs to be done to eradicate the scourge, in spite of the significant strides made in reducing it.

Zimbabwe’s prevalence rate is still high compared to some countries in Sub Saharan Africa – Uganda, for instance has achieved a single digit figure, they say.

The players, fronted by the National Aids Council (Nac), last year came up with the Third Zimbabwe National HIV and Aids Strategic Plan (ZNASP III 2015-2018).

The strategic plan is aligned to Zim-Asset to propel the “national social and economic development agenda including national efforts to counter HIV.”

It seeks to reduce the country’s HIV incidence among adults and adolescents by 50 percent from 0.98 percent in 2013 to 0 in 2018 and HIV-related mortality by 80 percent for both adults and children by 2018.

But the success story has a negative spin to it.

The ambitious plan which is in line with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number three of ensuring good health and well-being has largely ignored the disabled community as part of its key populations in its mapping.

This is despite the fact that a significant number of people living with disabilities are infected and affected by the HIV and Aids pandemic.

According to a report by the National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH), more than 1,2 million people in Zimbabwe are disabled and 300,000 of them being HIV positive.

The report notes that instructions for the use of condoms have never been provided in Braille for people with visual impairments nor in sign language for those with hearing impairments.

The neglect of this constituency may derail the fight against HIV and Aids. This could cost the country’s efforts to meet SDG number three and realising the goals of its own strategic plan on HIV and Aids.

Activists working with people with disabilities have called on the Government to roll out HIV and Aids programmes which cater for people living with disabilities.

A local nongovernmental organisation working with the disabled on reproductive issues, Disability, HIV and Aids Trust (DHAT) has challenged the Government to incorporate sign language and the use of Braille in reaching out people with disabilities.

DHAT youth programmes coordinator, Mr Edwin Ndlovu says most of the people with disabilities like the blind and the hearing-impaired did not have access to information on sexual reproductive issues.

“People with disabilities have little or no knowledge on sexual reproductive health because they do not have information that can be accessed by everyone. They are actually relegated to the margins of society.

“There is a need for authorities to provide some of the materials in braille and sign language for the benefit of people with disabilities.

“The lack of such materials has been the main hindrance to their accessing such information,” he said.

Mr Sandiso Ndlovu, a programmes coordinator for Students and Youth Working on Reproductive Health Action Team (Saywhat) which works with students in higher and tertiary institutions said most of the materials on HIV and Aids in tertiary institutions are not compatible with people living with disabilities.

“Most of the programmes are not tailor made to include students with disabilities at tertiary institutions.

Most of the tertiary institutions do not have either a policy or a clear programme on how we give students with disabilities information on sexual reproductive health.

“Most of the information at these institutions is not compatible and the health workers there are not skilled enough to address issues of students with disabilities.

You take for instance a condom demonstration to a visually impaired person needs a skill to be able to execute it properly,” he said.

Mr Ndlovu said students living with disabilities lack access to information pertaining to sexual reproductive health as most activities and facilities at tertiary institutions do not cater for them.

Nac monitoring and evaluation director, Mr Amon Mpofu said the organisation had tasked the NASCOH to compile a report on the needs of people with disabilities to be adopted by his organisation to cater for the group.

Said Mr Mpofu: “We realised that the disabled are one of our key populations and we are working with NASCOH to have their input in the programmes that we are running as Nac.

“We have discovered that some of them cannot read so they need braille and some of them cannot hear and would need sign language.

“We need to develop braille and most skills to reach to these people. We have also discovered that most of these people are also discriminated against in terms of education as some of them did not access good education.

So these are the things that we have found but we need the input from people living with disabilities themselves.”

He said Nac has meanwhile printed material in braille and is in the process of printing material in sign language so that people living with disabilities are prioritised in terms of accessing key information.

Mr Mpofu said there is a need for a multi-stakeholder inclusiveness, if ZNASP III is to succeed. ZNASP lll adopted and maintained the ZNASP II vision: “Towards Zero New Infections, Zero stigma and discrimination and Zero AIDS related deaths” with an inspirational goal of “Ending Aids by 2030” — @lavuzigara1.