Health Ministry eyeing independent HIV/AIDS fight

Health Ministry eyeing independent HIV/AIDS fight – Dr Singh

Nov 01, 2012 News

– scales down annual national testing activities

“Ultimately we at the Ministry of Health understand that we have to be able to take responsibility for the health of our people,” said Head of the National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS), Dr Shanti Singh, as she spoke of ambitious plans to take on the fight of HIV/AIDS without donor support.
However, Dr Singh, during an interview with this publication, disclosed that this development will not be fully realised in the very near future since, according to her, the Ministry is currently awaiting the outcome of the Global Fund Phase Two proposal.
A positive outcome could see the Health Ministry benefiting from an additional three years of funding to aid its fight against HIV/AIDS.
The NAPS Head revealed that the Ministry is also currently working in close collaboration with officials of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) so “when we consider the Global Fund and PEPFAR funding and take all of that into context, then we will be able to define our transition plan.”
Although unable to disclose an actual cost required to manage the entire HIV/AIDS programme, Dr Singh revealed that the Ministry is currently engaging UNAIDS with a view of embarking a national HIV/AIDS spending assessment for the coming year.
“That is one of the things that we are looking forward to and what we have done is something that does not look at the direct cost, but an assessment called the HIV/AIDS Sustainability Assessment.”
This process, according to Dr Singh, is designed to look mainly at the cost of little elements within the programme, a basis on which efforts will be made to prioritise, in order to achieve sustainability.
In fact, the NAPS Manager said that “we have been having discussions with all of our donor partners in terms of sustainability” even as she pointed out that the PEPFAR programme has already established – with the Health Ministry – a Transition Committee. The Committee, she related, is being led by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Mr Leslie Codogan, as well as Chief Medical Officer, Dr Shamdeo Persaud.
Efforts by the Committee, Dr Singh said, are geared at working on sustainability issues and to examine “how we prioritise what has to be the essential and core functions of the Ministry that must be maintained under any circumstance.”
Availability of antiretroviral treatments, she noted, are some of the factors that fall under the category of essential thus “we have started working on that sustainability and transition plan, allowing for the ministry to start to take over some of the responsibility that were covered by donors before.”
Dr Singh revealed that even some of the human resources that were donor-supported have already been diverted to the control of the Ministry, as well as some of the re-agents, consumables and products that were previously donor-supported too.
“It is not an easy process and it is not a quick process and so it is going to take a lot of time and planning, and most of the donors have been working with us so that we can have a smooth transition.”
Meanwhile, Dr Singh disclosed that the effort towards sustainability has seen the Ministry taking a decision two days ago to revise its annual national week of HIV testing plans. In fact, this year the testing venture will be scaled-down, allowing for a mere three-day testing activity which will prelude the December 1 observance of World AIDS Day.
For the past few years, the Ministry had spearheaded a week of national testing with a view of encouraging persons to know their status while at the same time reducing stigma and discrimination associated with the disease.
However, the decision to reduce the testing days to three comes as a result of the Ministry’s recognition that “we have achieved what we wanted to as it relates to the National Week of testing,” Dr Singh asserted.
The testing activities will be held under the theme “Zero Stigma” which is expected to coincide with the World AIDS Day slogan which speaks to “zero stigma, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths.”
In addition to the days of testing, Dr Singh said that the World AIDS day commemoration will include a number of other activities which will require the participation of the public.