The High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS is meant to catalyse support for a commitment to achieve ambitious treatment targets – the Fast-Track approach.
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The UNAIDS report shows that the number of people receiving treatment has more than doubled in every region of the world apart from Western Europe and North America since 2010.
The Pan-Caribbean Partnership Against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) says it will hold a meeting in the United States on Wednesday to brief Caribbean governments and civil society ahead of the United Nations High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) on Ending AIDS.
The statement said that through the collaborative efforts of Caricom-PANCAP, the Caribbean has seen significant achievements.
“PANCAP believes that for the Caribbean to protect and sustain these gains, Caricom member states must join the rest of the world at this meeting to work together on a strong political declaration”.
One of the people living with HIV, Angela Chiwetani of Widows Foundation of Life, said she hopes to get a lot of information on taking ARVs.
“You start by implementing WHO’s recommendation to offer immediate treatment so that people living with HIV stop getting turned away because they are not sick enough to qualify for treatment under outdated criteria, and fit treatment in people’s lives through better adapted strategies to bring treatment to where people live and eliminate user fees”, said Dr. Mit Philips, MSF health policy advisor and lead author of the Out of Focus report. More than 1.2 million people live with the virus in the country, with one in eight unaware that they are positive. He will help communicate benchmarks and goals in the AIDS response, including amfAR’s mission of finding a cure for HIV by 2020, in order to realize UNAIDS’ vision of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
Speaking at a meeting on an integrated health intervention programme, set up by the Diocese of Sunyani, Dr Paulina Appiah, the local Municipal Director of Health, said the new HIV infections were disturbing and appealed to religious organisations to help intensify sex education. “We have to reach these people that have been fast-tracked into the system”.
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“A lack of investment now will result in the epidemic being prolonged indefinitely and that would be a false economy”, he stressed. It provides a structured and unified approach to the Caribbean’s response to the HIV epidemic and coordinates the response through the Caribbean Regional Strategic Framework on HIV and AIDS to maximise efficient use of resources and increase impact, mobilise resources and build capacity of partners.
