Latest update December 4th, 2024 2:40 AM
May 15, 2009 News
Oral presentations of Guyana’s work in HIV/AIDS have been selected to be showcased at the 2009 Implementers Meeting scheduled to take place from June 10 to June 14 in Windhoek, Namibia under the theme ‘Optimizing the Response: Partnerships for Sustainability.’
The HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meeting gathers together programme implementers from countries around the world to share best practices and lessons learned in the fight against global AIDS.
According to the Ministry of Health, it is the only meeting of its kind focused specifically on implementation.
On Wednesday, local implementers and other stakeholders involved in the HIV/AIDS response, including school children, gathered at the International Conference Centre at Liliendaal to view some of the abstracts that were submitted to the PEPFAR Implementers meeting.
Through the collaborative efforts of the Health Ministry, the National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS) and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), two of Guyana’s abstracts were chosen for oral presentation at the upcoming Namibia Meeting.
Head of NAPS, Dr Shanti Singh, noted that this year some sixteen abstracts were submitted, most by first time authors.
The two selected pieces deal with voluntary blood donation and an HIV prevention programme engaged in by work study students.
Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy, who addressed the forum, reminisced on how far Guyana has come in the fight, which continues to garner praise from around the world. “Our HIV/AIDS fight has come to a point where few of us who were there from the beginning would have imagined.”
This, he said, is reflective in the unprecedented number of non-governmental organisations in Guyana and the huge interest in voluntary HIV work. He charged the participants to use the forum to acquaint themselves of what their colleagues are doing so as to improve overall effectiveness.
Minister Ramsammy also underscored the need for Guyana’s work to be known and documented correctly, noting that the annals of history must one day be able to reveal the truth about the implementation and establishment of local initiatives.
He noted that many persons are unduly taking credit for a number of initiatives adding that it is critical that the truth be revealed if only for the purpose of the younger generation and for lessons to be learnt. Recognizing the need for global networking in HIV/AIDS, Guyana, through Minister Ramsammy, recommended to then Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson at a PEPFAR gathering in Geneva in 2004 that the Implementers Meeting be established.
The first meeting was held in Ethiopia. This year 345 abstracts have been selected to be presented at the upcoming meeting in Windhoek, Namibia.
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