Katleho is a social science agent driven by the desire to make impactful and sustainable change to his community and country at large. He has encountered many economic and social hurdles, which helped ignite his desire to seek solutions in the communities in which he has lived. He believes in proactively tackling the many social problems his country is plagued with. He strongly asserts that in life no problem is insurmountable if we each believe in our inner strengths and collectively take our social issues head-on.

In Their Own Words

My project focused on advocacy for community delivery of PrEP in Lesotho. Its main objectives were community and national advocacy for changes and refinement of Oral PrEP guidelines to enable community dispensing by way of resource centers, pharmacies, clients’ homes or their preferred locations as well to introduce new available PrEP options.

I have advised and pushed the MOH to facilitate and coordinate development and refinement of uniform PrEP messaging tailored for different eligible groups including youth and Key Populations (KPs). I was also part of the collective that urged Ministry to expedite inclusion of longer acting PrEP tools like CAB for PrEP for individuals at risk HIV. I have also actively advocated for the introduction of the Dapivirine vaginal ring (DVR) for women in Lesotho. Through active participation in the Global Fund’s Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM), I advocated for inclusion of funding for DVR from Global Fund as PEPFAR is still unclear as to whether they will fund procurement of DVR beyond the CATALYST study. Another key achievement is that as part of my work on the GF CCM, I have ensured that the next funding round includes scale up of HIV self-testing and multi-month dispensing of oral PrEP.