SAfAIDS will soon be implementing a new Sweden-funded regional programme, Transforming Lives, with a strong social accountability component. Â SAfAIDS Media team leader, Tariro Makanga-Chikumbirike (TMC), interviewed Juliet Mkaronda (JM), Head of Regional Programmes, to shed light on the new programme.
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By Elizabeth Ndhlovu-Dumbreni
SAfAIDS Changing The River’s Flow for Young People (CTRF4YP) programme has been helping shape and transform young people’s lives for the better. One such case is that of Primrose Munetsi (not her real name), an adolescent who, through the intervention of the CTRF4YP youth champions, was able to quit smoking marijuana and begin to transform her life by making the most of her time.
SAfAIDS Zambia is making steady progress in building the capacity of adolescents and young people so that they can hold policy makers and budget holders to account in allocating adequate resources to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services for adolescent girls and young people. SAfAIDS Tariro Makanga-Chikumbirike (TMC) had a one-on-one with SAfAIDS Zambia Country Representative, Chrispin Chomba (CC), to shed more light on their work on social accountability.
Through recent social accountability monitoring with support from Save the Children Sweden, SAfAIDS Zambia has gathered evidence that systematic poor public resource management is a major cause of limited access to adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in the country. This is a result of limited knowledge and skills among the duty bearers in appreciating that delivery of SRH services is their obligation. In turn, this is aggravated by limited advocacy and social accountability knowledge and skills on the part of adolescents and young people, and their inability to hold duty bearers to account about the services they provide.
As Zimbabwe intensifies its efforts towards the attainment of the 95–95–95 targets to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2030, stakeholders are joining forces to come up with strategies to find the last ‘missing’ children so that they can treat, care and retain them in prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) interventions.
One of the key objectives of SAfAIDS’ Asikhulume, Ngatitaure, Let’s Talk programme is to prepare young people for their engagement role by increasing their understanding and articulation of the basic tenets of the Constitution, particularly those relating to health, education and social services.
Health is an overarching right, as one cannot enjoy any other rights if they are in ill health. Citizens need to know that it is their right to have access to appropriate healthcare services. If these are not provided, they can take responsible authorities to task by demanding that right. In creating awareness and empowering communities to have the right knowledge and information, SAfAIDS and Restless Development engaged the services of a legal practitioner to unpack the importance of access to health services at the National Dialogue on strengthening access to health in Bulawayo on the 2nd of February 2018.
Desire Ncube is a young woman aged 31. In 2017, she trained as a Youth Champion under the SAfAIDS Asikhulume, Ngatitaure, Let’s Talk project. As a young person, she is bold and unafraid to speak out on behalf of other young people and is also chairperson of the School Development Committee of her local primary school. This is an indication of her dedication to community development and of how well she is perceived in her community.
SAfAIDS Swaziland participated in a sensitisation campaign at Mahamba border gate in the Shiselweni region on December 22nd 2017, to welcome migrant workers home for the festive season. The activity was organised by the Ministry of Health working in close collaboration with the National TB control Program (NTCP) and country partners working on TB and HIV, especially those working with migrant workers. The goal of the sensitisation campaign was to educate migrant workers on health services available on their return home, to promote linkages to care and improve adherence to treatment.
By Elizabeth Ndhlovu-Dumbreni
 McBride Mvuri (far left) with some of the young people at Ndaiziva in Norton
Key beneficiaries of an Ndaiziva Capacity Development project, who were interviewed by a team of SAfAIDS partners as part of the Irish Aid Best Practice documentation workshop, expressed undying gratitude and solemn joy to SAfAIDS, for making it possible for the Norton-based partner to come up with life-changing projects in their town.
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