NAC issues urgent appeal to save life-changing HIV youth programme

CHENGETAI MURIMWA

The National AIDS Council (NAC) has issued an urgent plea for support to rescue a crucial youth-led HIV programme that is on the verge of collapse due to dwindling financial resources.

The Community Adolescent Treatment Support (CATS) initiative—widely credited for transforming the lives of young people living with HIV—is struggling to stay afloat as a lack of funding forces many of its trained peer supporters to abandon their roles.

Gutu District AIDS Coordinator for NAC, Pascal Mukuve, has warned that unless immediate action is taken, the progress made in improving treatment adherence and reducing stigma among adolescents living with HIV risks being undone.

“These young people play a crucial role in the fight against HIV by encouraging treatment adherence and offering psychosocial support to their peers,” Mukuve said. “Unfortunately, most of them exit the programme after graduation because there are no resources to keep them engaged.”

CATS recruits are often young people living with HIV themselves—individuals who have faced the same struggles as their peers and, through their own experiences, now offer vital peer education, treatment monitoring, and emotional support in communities often neglected by the formal health system.

For years, the CATS programme has been a lifeline, particularly in rural areas like Gutu, where stigma, isolation, and limited healthcare access leave HIV-positive adolescents vulnerable to dropping off treatment.

But with donor funding declining and no consistent financial backing from local stakeholders, the programme’s future is hanging by a thread.

The NAC is now appealing directly to government agencies, development partners, and community leaders to urgently intervene, warning that failure to do so could reverse hard-won gains in adolescent HIV care.

“Retaining these champions is essential for maintaining gains made in adolescent HIV care,” Mukuve stressed. “If we lose them, we lose the fight to keep young people on treatment and living healthy, productive lives.”

Experts say the consequences of losing the CATS programme extend beyond individual lives—the collapse of the initiative would deal a severe blow to Zimbabwe’s efforts to meet the UNAIDS target of ending HIV as a public health threat by 2030.

In rural districts, where healthcare services are overstretched and stigma remains pervasive, the CATS volunteers are often the only trusted link between adolescents and life-saving treatment.

As the programme teeters on the brink, NAC’s message is clear: without urgent and sustained financial support, the future of thousands of HIV-positive young people—and Zimbabwe’s broader fight against the epidemic—hangs in the balance.