This scourge has affected the districts within my jurisdiction, including Lusaka, Chongwe, Kafue, Chilanga, and Shibuyunji. The people in these areas are equally vulnerable to this disease. However, as traditional leaders, we have been actively engaged in the national effort to combat HIV/AIDS by educating our communities about upholding high moral standards, avoiding promiscuous behavior, prohibiting traditional sexual cleansing practices, and discouraging polygamy.

When the first HIV cases were reported in Botswana we did not have the infrastructurein place to deal with this epidemic. We had to work in partnerships to be able to address the impact of the epidemic. We know what can work, and now our response to HIV aligns with the SDGs and the national vision for the country's future.

HIV/AIDS is a personal challenge, a challenge affecting individuals, families and communities.

The whole issue of HIV/AIDS was new and it was myself and one Hajara who started creating awareness about it then. We achieved that by going round schools, prison yards and some ministries, to do advocacy and sensitisation exercises and later, we embarked on some training programmes and thereby got some funding from some organisations to work more.

We ought to tackle this problem [HIV/AIDS] and further improve our behaviour.

The work is being carried out in collaboration with the universities of Abidjan and Ouagadougou.

In many places around the world, the LGBT community and individuals infected with HIV/AIDS continue to face discrimination in employment, political representation, and access to health care, including sexual and reproductive health care and rights. They certainly must not be left behind. I will continue to push for the inclusion of these marginalized groups in the post-2015 agenda and beyond.

My Current Research work is on Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C Prevalence and Epidemiology in Sickle Cell Patients and Controls in South West Nigeria. Community Access and participation towards an attitudinal change for a Preventive approach to Sickle Cell disease in South west Nigeria. Advocacy and Support for Sickle Cell Affected Individuals and their significant others in the Community in South West Nigeria.

Yes, it is. One of our key achievements is the introduction of the mobile approach for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC). I believe the UPDF was the first to implement this model, and now it has been adopted widely. It’s not just about pioneering these initiatives, but also about responding to the unique needs of the situation. We realized that establishing a traditional health facility to serve our troops would be impractical—when would we ever complete a whole battalion? And with soldiers often deployed to remote locations, getting them to a fixed facility would be challenging. This is why our funding model is so distinctive. Current funding focuses on high-incidence areas, but often, these areas don’t have our troops. Instead, our soldiers may be stationed in regions where the HIV prevalence is lower, but they still require services. In some of the most remote locations, the prevalence might not be high, but access to healthcare is extremely difficult. It's not just about providing services to soldiers, but also to the surrounding communities who live in these hard-to-reach areas. We must ensure that people in these regions have access to care. It’s been valuable that PEPFAR has recognized the unique challenges of military health needs and routed funding through URC-DHAPP, an organization that understands military logistics and can effectively negotiate at that level. When mapping HIV distribution across Uganda, the scientific approach is logical, but it doesn’t account for the large group of people—soldiers and civilians alike—who still need care, whether it’s treatment or prevention services. Without a tailored approach, these individuals might be overlooked.

Experience also shows that to be effective, we must adopt a model of partnership, not paternalism. This approach is based on our conviction that people in the developing world have the capacity to improve their own lives, and will rise to meet high expectations if we set them. America has sought to apply this model in our Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Every nation that receives American support through this initiative develops its own plan for fighting HIV/AIDS and measures the results. And so far, these results are inspiring. Five years ago, 50,000 people in sub-Sahara Africa were receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS. Today, that number is nearly 1.7 million. We're taking a similar approach to fighting malaria, and so far, we've supported local efforts to protect more than 25 million Africans.

Barack has led by example. When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test—for the very point of showing folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.

Fast Tracking ending AIDS will require reaching the hard-to-reach through decentralization of services to where people are using the Gogo centres in every chiefdom, ensuring that no one is left behind.

“Last month in Montreal, Canada, at the International AIDS Conference, the world learned that Botswana had achieved and exceeded the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets: with 95 per cent of the population being aware of their HIV status, 98 per cent of those on treatment and 98 per cent of those are virally suppressed."

We also determined the operational acceptability of the new ASDHQ by collecting qualitative data from the donors. We hypothesized that the ASDHQ questionnaire would reduce the rate of risk deferrals compared to historical data, increase HIV prevalence in deferred donors compared to HIV prevalence in accepted donors.