Former NAC chief counsels new board
Published On July 27, 2015 » 1653 Views» By Administrator Times » Latest News, Stories
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Bishop Banda 300x174By JAMES KUNDA –

FORMER National AIDS Council (NAC) chairperson Joshua Banda has urged the newly inducted Board of the institution to implement additional strategies aimed at increasing local financing to support AIDS response.
Bishop Banda said it was worrying that response to combating HIV/AIDS was 86 per cent funded externally with locally generated funds only amounting to 14 per cent.
He said this in Lusaka recently during the orientation meeting of new NAC board members held at the Southern Sun Hotel.
This is according to a statement released in Lusaka yesterday by NAC Communications Manager Justin Mwiinga.
“Let the Act that establishes NAC be your utmost guide. I urge you to be innovative and visionary. Think outside the proverbial ‘box’ in order to find new ways of exploiting local means to increase domestic funding for the national response,” Bishop Banda said.
He counseled the new leadership of NAC to guide the institution to continuously anchor its HIV and AIDS interventions as opposed to pursuing potential externally motivated goals.
Bishop Banda commended Government for increasing the annual budgetary allocation to NAC in 2013 to nearly 200 per cent to strengthen and sustain its coordination role of the national AIDS agenda.
NAC chairperson George Tembo commended Bishop Banda for providing insights into the HIV and AIDS sector and sharing information on where more energies and focus could be directed.
At the same event, Network of Zambian People Living with HIV and AIDS executive director Eunice Sinyemu said civil society organisations were critical in the overall success of the HIV programmes.
Ms Sinyemu said without a voice from civil society, many of the gains made in HIV response would not exist.

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