Bantwana Acknowledged at Annual Social Welfare Conference in Tanzania
Bantwana is the technical lead for social welfare on the Community Health and Social Welfare Systems Strengthening Project (CHSSP) in Tanzania. Through CHSSP, we support national-level collaboration, leadership and capacity building in social welfare and protection to increase access to and quality of services for people living with HIV, adolescent girls and young women, and vulnerable children and their families. Our staff joined the JSI-led CHSSP team to participate in the annual social welfare conference whose aim was to inform the implementation progress of the social welfare sector, share best practices and challenges on effective implementation of services, and showcase the successes of different social welfare key results.
CHSSP set up an exhibition booth where the guest of honor, the Prime Minister of Tanzania — Hon. Kassim Majaliwa — stopped by to learn about JSI’s systems strengthening work in the country. Vailet Mollel, Bantwana’s Social Welfare Technical Lead, provided an overview of how the project developed Tanzania’s first integrated HIV case management system, which links key populations (adolescent girls and young women, people living with HIV, orphans and vulnerable children) to the necessary health and social welfare services with the goal of eradicating HIV in the country by 2020. The project has also trained more than 15,000 caseworkers to implement the case management system to link HIV-effected individuals to care and treatment at the grassroots level.
A few of the CHSSP-trained community caseworkers were on hand to provide a brief demonstration on the types of services they provide to key populations at the community level, such as using the MUAC tape to measure malnutrition in children. During his official speech, the prime minister acknowledged CHSSPs efforts and contribution in achieving UNAIDS 90-90-90 goal in Tanzania: 90% of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status; 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy, and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression.