Tuesday, 18 February 2014

City adopts new approach to tackle the HIV scourge

Change of programme implementation approach by financiers of Pamoja Tuwalee project in 11 wards of Tanga city undertaken under the Pastoral Activities and Services for Aids of the Roman Catholic Church (Pasadit) has been cited here as being exemplary.
The project -- funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), through the Arusha-based World Education (WEI/Bantwana) since 2010 -- has reached about 9,000 orphans and vulnerable children in the city out of targeted 10,000.
According to the Pasadit Project coordinator Stanislaus Ndihoreye, the approach of the project now focuses on tracking capacity building and advocacy without any direct support to the victims.
“This has posed a big challenge to the programme as those victims who were directly benefiting from it, including those in secondary schools, now don’t access to that support, causing many calls from the victims,” said Ndihoreye.
The Pasadit project started in 2002 as a church-based HIV/Aids committee in response to a call for a multi-sectoral approach to the fight against the disease by former President Benjamin Mkapa.
Pasadit work was implemented, from 2007 to 2009, under Catholic Relief Services but received a boost from 2010 to date through implementation of the project as Pamoja Tuwalee project.
Mr Ndihoreye mentioned other challenges as increasing number of vulnerable children saying that although Pasadit and other development partners have been investing a lot in terms of resources on programmes, the challenge is still big.
“HIV/Aids prevalence rate in the country is still high so necessary efforts are needed to scale it down,” he said.
The other challenge has been cited as funding sources, Mr Ndihoreye said, explaining that the organisation depends much on external funding thus making it difficult to expand and meet all the necessary expectations.

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