PartnersGF - 2004-07-10

Partnership Forum providing space for unheard voices
HDN Key Correspondent Team
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Delegates from Asia Pacific, North Africa and the Middle East attending the Global Fund Partnership Forum in Bangkok this week met together to share experiences and listen to one another. They originated came from a wide range of countries in the three regions, and are all involved in implementing programmes addressing HIV/AIDS.

The experiences of delegates, especially those representing affected communities and civil society organisations, were often emotional, especially as they find themselves with similar issues and concerns related to the disease.

Advocates in developing countries in particular have been pushing for access to treatment, creating an enormous amount of demand from community stakeholders. This has put pressure on governments to provide life-prolonging drug treatments, with the Global Fund putting in additional budget.


Specifically, they were strongly of the opinion that prevention had been side-tracked by the Global Fund, which is putting more emphasis on expanding access to treatment. The focus is too much on antibiotics for opportunistic infections and antiretroviral drugs.
This has had a domino effect in many health systems, especially if there are insufficient trained infectious disease specialists or doctors to attend to the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS.

Enormous resources to train or retrain biomedical specialists will be needed to prepare health systems to provide optimum treatment if not comprehensive care.

There also appears to be a need to strike a balance between prevention among behaviour change in vulnerable groups and in groups practicing high- risk behaviour. Drastic moves to promote condom use is deemed important, and non-government organisations can play a crucial role along in this area, but resources, as always, are seen as insufficient.

Community-based organisations had high hopes for the Global Fund. For them it is an extra ordinary financing mechanism driven by the principles of inclusiveness and partnership, but is not necessarily being seen on the ground.

Genuine participation has been missing, say many delegates, and consequently the aim of bridging the gap between prevention and overall care and support has not been fully realised within Fund projects. This has left intact the perception that addressing HIV/AIDS is only about antiretroviral drug therapy.

We now have a wealth of experience with a range of healthcare approaches, some that have worked and some that have not. We should all learn from these. Ignoring what we know is effective will always bring healthcare interventions back to square one. The result will be felt worst by infected communities, and eventually lead to orphaned or vulnerable children. The hope is that the lesson of prevention does not have to be re-learned at the cost of those least able to influence health policies.


HDN Key Correspondent Team
Email: correspondents@hdnet.org