UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé visited the Mbare City Health Clinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, on 11 June. The public clinic runs an antiretroviral treatment programme that also provides services for victims of rape.

During the visit to the clinic, which is supported by the City of Harare and Médecins sans Frontières, he met people living with HIV, including 19-year-old Thandiwe. Mr Sidibé heard the harrowing story of how she contracted HIV through rape and described her tears as, “A sign of our collective failures. We must do better for her and all women and girls.”

Speaking at the clinic, traditional leader Chief Chiveso denounced violence against women and called on men to be activists against gender-based violence. Mr Sidibé hailed the Chief as a champion for gender equality and for ending gender-based violence and the AIDS epidemic.

Earlier, Mr Sidibé engaged in a dialogue with community leaders, who told him of the challenges that marginalization and unemployment bring. Mr Sidibé said that adolescent girls are affected by the poor economic situation, which has resulted in more girls being infected with HIV compared to their male peers.

Two thirds of the population in Zimbabwe is under 25 years and HIV prevalence is almost two times higher among women aged 15–24 than among men of the same age. Zimbabwe has the sixth highest number of annual adolescent AIDS-related deaths in the world.

Mr Sidibé lauded the combined efforts of Zimbabwe’s civil society and government, which have resulted in a drop in HIV prevalence and the number of AIDS deaths, but warned that the country needs to do more to Fast-Track the response to HIV in order to end the AIDS epidemic in Zimbabwe by 2030. “If we are not careful, after 2015 people will forget about AIDS, complacency will creep in and people will look at other crisis,” he said.