SOFAR Zambia attends National AIDS strategic framework consultative meeting

SOFAR Monitoring & Evaluation co-leads Prof. Virginia Bond and Dr. Musonda Simwinga recently attended a three-day meeting coordinated by the Ministry of Health and the National AIDS Council (NAC) to review the National AIDS Strategic Framework (NASF) 2023–2027, which aims to control and eventually end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia.

The meeting was attended by various stakeholders including civil society organisations, implementing partners, multilateral organisations and government departments. Prof. Bond and Dr. Simwinga not only participated in the deliberations regarding the review of the current framework but also contributed text related to stigma and discrimination and community-led monitoring for the new framework for the period 2028 - 2023.

Prof. Bond noted that while the current NASF has content on stigma and discrimination, it does not have specific interventions stop or mitigate it. The duo provided content relating to stigma interventions drawing on evidence and lessons learned from a multi-country stigma and discrimination project called the expanded Total Facility Approach (eTFA) implemented in Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana. They also provided content with regard to Developing and Strengthening Community Capacity in Research and Data Collection for Community-Led Monitoring (CLM). Dr. Simwinga noted the need for Community-led monitoring efforts to collect data beyond numbers for monitoring HIV programmes performance.

The content provided suggest collection of data on how community members or beneficiaries are experiencing the programmes. Thus the need to develop capacity in community-led monitors in qualitative and participatory research methods, such as In-Depth Interviews (IDIs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), and observations was highlighted in the content.