By Steve Chirombo

Dedza, April 10, Mana: Stakeholders in the country have been challenged to show commitment towards addressing challenges that Young People Living with HIV (Y+) are facing.

Coordinator for the Resilient and Empowered Adolescent and Young People (READY+) Project under Y+ organization, Lusungu Haraba made the call Monday during interactive sessions with young people living with HIV in Dedza district on Community Led Monitoring (CLM) READY to care score card.

She said that, “We are calling on partners to continue supporting teen club programming to ensure that issues of treatment adherence should no longer exist. Much as we are talking about ending HIV we need to invest more in terms of quality access as well as prevention.”

According to Haraba, READY to care score card was one of the tools they are using in the READY Component to ensure that young people have the capacity and skills to evaluate the health services they are getting in their local health facilities.

She said that as an organization, their expectation was to ensure that young people are capable of receiving quality treatment in terms of HIV much as their efforts target at ending HIV by 2030.

“The agenda 2030 is that everyone should largely contribute to it. So, within the led movement, we are ensuring that youth are resilient, knowledgeable and empowered so that they can easily hold the stakeholders accountable and ensure that the services they are receiving are supportive and the environment is also supportive enough,” Haraba stated

One of the participants, Olivia Njuzi from Mandala area in the district, expressed hope that the session would help them identify challenges young people living with HIV are facing in their localities and in health centres where they go to access medical services thereby registering improvements on the same.

She bemoaned some misconduct among health workers towards young people living with HIV.

Dedza district Y+ Coordinator, Chifuniro Misomali said the district is trying to ensure that Youth Friendly Health Services (YFHS) are easily accessible citing availability of YFHS facility in the district.

“The engagement was quite insightful as it empowered us to be responsible on issues that affect us at the same time, enabling us to take immediate action. This calls for collaborative efforts not only among us and other stakeholders will go a long way in ensuring development,” he said

Misomali complained of persistent discrimination against YPLHIV, lack of inclusion and condoms and further called on the youths to always be in the forefront in doing things by among others utilizing their clubs in identifying challenges as well as those who could offer support.

He called on them to lead in ending HIV through use of condoms and other preventive measures as well as getting tested to know their status.

The interactive sessions are done with support from the Global Network of Young People Living with HIV.