By Haruna Gimba
African Health Ministers and international partners are uniting in a pledge to end AIDS in children by the 2030.
Hosted by the United Republic of Tanzania, the alliance will run for the next eight years until 2030, aiming to fix one of the most glaring disparities in the AIDS response: while three quarters of adults living with HIV globally are on treatment, only half of children are.
And children accounted for 15 per cent of all AIDS deaths despite making up only 4% of all people living with HIV.
The alliance is to advocate and mobilize political commitment and resources to ensure action and accountability around shared targets and commitments.
Twelve countries have joined the alliance in the first phase: Angola, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Kenya.
Others are; Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Tanzania being one of the first countries to sign up.
The alliance will meet at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre (JNICC), Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
Speakers at the event includes; Philip Mpango, Vice President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Monica Geingos, First Lady of the Republic of Namibia, Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Chip Lyons, Elisabeth Glaeser Paediatric AIDS Foundation, EGPAF.
Others to speak via video are; Catherine Russell, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Executive Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund and John Nkengasong, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, PEPFAR.
