SAfAIDS comes in as a partner supporting the Ministry of Health. Our work has really been centred around capacitating health workers and community volunteers, to enable them to disseminate key information around the importance of switching children from suboptimal HIV regimens to pDTG. This capacity building is critically important because they are the bridge between the health facility and the community.

As SAfAIDS we have also included some of our models we use for demand creation at community level. We have seen from the new materials that we've developed, that mothers are really becoming receptive for their children transitioning to pDTG. So we continue to work within communities to drive the agenda of an HIV response. That is not only community developed, but it's also community owned, community led and community driven.

It makes us feel very proud. But you know, the communities themselves do a lot of the work. They soften the ground for us to be able to carry on. So in essence, any accolade that we get we also pass that through to the communities because without them, we won't be able to do this work.

An article about the rollout of pDTG in Zimbabwe was recently published in The Lancet. Learn more about the government’s perspective on the national rollout of dolutegravir to children here.

We could capacitate all the health workers, but at the end of the day it's up to the caregivers, the mothers to be able to dispense medication and ensure that their children get their treatment. So some of the fundamental things that we've got to look at is treatment literacy at community and caregiver level. To roll out an extensive treatment literacy programme, that has mentorship and  ongoing support to ensure that we also include pDTG, in the day to day work that they do.

We started on this journey to achieve very huge milestones and we have achieved so much together. The partnership has grown from strength to strength. We recognise those efforts, but also hope that in the not too distant future, we can continue working in Zimbabwe to find, test and treat all missing children living with HIV.

One of the key things as the legacy of the Find, Test & Treat programme is capacitated health workers who will be absorbed into the mainstream health system by the government. We know that definitely with their skills and knowledge, we will continue to see children being born and living through the first years of their lives harm free.

There has been a rolling back of a lot of the gains that were made prior to COVID-19. Vertical transmission has increased from about 5.4% to 8.4%. So clearly there's an increase in children testing positive. It's important that even though Zimbabwe is doing better than most countries, we should remember we also have targets to achieve. We have an elimination strategy within the vertical transmission programming. Now is not the time for us to reduce the momentum. Now is the time to actually increase the momentum so we can achieve those 95-95-95 targets and also prepare the country towards the path to elimination and eventually validation through the WHO. We need to be ready and be responsive to some of these acts that we otherwise would not have prepared for.